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Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

bbc.com

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Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

8note wrote: post #54
Svip wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, that the King is not explicit in this, he cannot be, he's a constitutional monarch. However, the subtly is thick, and it's not hard to read between the lines, that he is thinking the government of Sweden has failed Sweden. He represents the government of Sweden, and when he is indirectly apologising, that's the statement he is making. And who is liable for the government in the end? Prime Minister Lö…

In Canada and Britain at least the monarch can dosplve the government, and asl the house to form a new government, or call an election

As I understand it, in Britain by law, the monarch only may prorogue or dissolve Parliament on advice of the Privy Council, and further that the legal effect of such an act by the Crown is dependent not only on the advice of the Council but on the legality of that advice, which can be struck down as unlawful by the courts negating the effect of the order; it is a power of the Queen (or King)-in-Council as the power to create law is of the Queen/King-in-Parliament.

I would be surprised if the monarch retained greater independent personal authority as Queen of Canada.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#62

Post by 0x445442 »

jgwil2 wrote: post #23
0x445442 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In order to claim something a failure you need objective criteria to begin with. In terms of Covid those objective criteria never existed and thus the King's claim has as much meaning and weight as mine that Sweden's handling of Covid has been a wild success compared to other countries.

There are many objective criteria: case rate and death rate are just the most obvious.

Those two criteria make no case for mask mandates nor lockdowns. Also, looking at those to data points alone is a woefully inadquate model for policy decisions.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#63

Post by learc83 »

taeric wrote: post #60
learc83 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114375/wearing-a-face-m... As of October--How often have you worn a face mask outside your home to protect yourself or others from coronavirus? Sweden: Always------- 4.3% Not at all-- 76.7% Spain: Always------ 95.8% Not at all-- 0.3%

Thanks! Do we know how accurate those are? I confess I have stopped driving on these numbers. Seems way more noise then signal. Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain. Do you also have a good launch point to get caught up on analysts?

Those numbers are self reported from scientific polls. But a 90+ percentage point difference even when self reported, probably means there's a large difference.

>Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain.

Spain is about 4 times as densely populated as Sweden, you'd expect spread and death rates for a communicable disease to be higher.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#64

Post by ruslanbogan »

libertine wrote: post #15
Svip wrote: post #4

I think it shouldn't be understated the significance of this. It is extremely rare for a constitutional monarch to so publicly undermine the democratically elected government. The Danish Queen and Norwegian King made speeches this Spring, where they were very careful to not undermine the government's strategy, but rather emphasis the significance of the pandemic. Additionally, in Sweden, it is has become pretty recog…

It's maybe time to EU to follow through and admit that both EU and individual countries approaches were a disgrace that costed, and will cost, too many lives.

The EU would just enact a covid tax for anyone infected

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#65

Post by leokennis »

libertine wrote: post #44
leokennis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait...what would have been the better approach then?

Well clearly something has failed when some countries have the pandemic under control for months now, and EU is riding waves. Or we want to ignore success cases? Because neither the media or governance talks about it, don't even mention that are countries in economic recovery and they match countries that have the pandemic under control. It's like living with the virus is bad for the economy. I think a big part of it…

I know of two major examples:

* China and other countries using state surveillance and privacy infringement to control the virus.

* New Zealand which is a pretty sparsely populated isolated island.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#66

Post by Holylander »

Sweden turns out quite strange of a country for the 21st century, reminds me of the USSR in late 80s:

- The situation is bad, real bad, but no one publicly acknowledges that;

- The government, instead of taking unpopular and painful but needed steps to try and handle the problem, makes itself "don't see any problem, our people are happy";

- By all European standards the policy is a mistake, but no one in office steps forward and says so, they rather play to the tune of "we can't see any problem, public opinion of the government is quite high". Kinda of asking to play louder the band on the Titanic.

- Swedes keep on "trusting the government to do what they do as they know better", while it is unclear on what their trust is based.

- To outsiders, this attitude of all sides involved sort of means "we accepted 'the devil take the hindmost' philosophy as we want to keep our daily happy about routine unchanged, so be it". Again, as I said - typical thinking of USSR of 80s. It didn't end well.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#67

Post by taeric »

learc83 wrote: post #63
taeric wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Do we know how accurate those are? I confess I have stopped driving on these numbers. Seems way more noise then signal. Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain. Do you also have a good launch point to get caught up on analysts?

Those numbers are self reported from scientific polls. But a 90+ percentage point difference even when self reported, probably means there's a large difference. >Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain. Spain is about 4 times as densely populated as Sweden, you'd expect spread and death rates for a communicable disease to be higher.

Agreed on the magnitude. The size of relative spike also looks worse. Such that I really don't know any obvious points to draw.

My question on accuracy is more on how well we know the source. A scientific online passive poll is likely still pretty bad. Especially if taken from a partisan audience.

Also, just to emphasize. I don't see any obvious points. But that not includes agreeing with the approach Sweden took. I just don't understand much of the reporting focusing on the voluntary aspect without establishing that Sweden had bad compliance with mask wearing.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#68

Post by learc83 »

taeric wrote: post #67
learc83 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers are self reported from scientific polls. But a 90+ percentage point difference even when self reported, probably means there's a large difference. >Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain. Spain is about 4 times as densely populated as Sweden, you'd expect spread and death rates for a communicable disease to be higher.

Agreed on the magnitude. The size of relative spike also looks worse. Such that I really don't know any obvious points to draw. My question on accuracy is more on how well we know the source. A scientific online passive poll is likely still pretty bad. Especially if taken from a partisan audience. Also, just to emphasize. I don't see any obvious points. But that not includes agreeing with the approach Sweden took. I…

Sure the polls that show Swedish people aren't wearing masks could have a huge margin of error. But everyone I've found shows numbers well under 10%. Here's another 2 polls that show around 5% of respondents say they wear masks [1,2]. I assume I could find more if I read Swedish.

>without establishing that Sweden had bad compliance with mask wearing.

I think what you're seeing is that it's taken as a given because no one is claiming the opposite. Many of the people stating this live in Sweden, and it's obviously not hard to walk around in public and take notice of the fact that very few people are wearing masks

Here's a few articles with reports from people living in Sweden estimating that less than 10% of people wear masks in public [3,4].

[1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-08/22/c_139308631.htm [2] https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1279755135892234241/photo/... [3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/sweden-really-lik... [4] https://www.aier.org/article/masks-in-sweden/

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#69

Post by Barrin92 »

leereeves wrote: post #48
Svip wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, that the King is not explicit in this, he cannot be, he's a constitutional monarch. However, the subtly is thick, and it's not hard to read between the lines, that he is thinking the government of Sweden has failed Sweden. He represents the government of Sweden, and when he is indirectly apologising, that's the statement he is making. And who is liable for the government in the end? Prime Minister Lö…

Even assuming that's true, why should anyone care? Why would someone's family line give their opinion about the coronavirus approach more value than anyone else's?

Because they monarchy is an institution that represents the nation itself and is its unifying symbol. It's not the family but the institution that matters, it has considerable public support and when they speak, which they usually don't, it matters for that very reason.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#70

Post by ruslanbogan »

Holylander wrote: post #66

Sweden turns out quite strange of a country for the 21st century, reminds me of the USSR in late 80s: - The situation is bad, real bad, but no one publicly acknowledges that; - The government, instead of taking unpopular and painful but needed steps to try and handle the problem, makes itself "don't see any problem, our people are happy"; - By all European standards the policy is a mistake, but no one in office steps…

> - Swedes keep on "trusting the government to do what they do as they know better", while it is unclear on what their trust is based

This is based on the Swedish belief that they are the smartest people in the world and that everyone else is dumb therefore their government's plan must be good and every other world government is just being hysterical

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