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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'

#71

Post by denimnerd42 »

leokennis wrote: post #65
libertine wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Korea - tremendous testing and good mask adherence

Australia - long lockdowns

Singapore - probably falls in with China on state surveillance and privacy infringement

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

#72

Post by denimnerd42 »

juancn wrote: post #57

It may be unpopular, but strict lockdowns are untenable in the long term. Living locked down is no life at all, it's just survival. And I'd rather take my chances if the alternative is perpetual stay at home orders (I'm from Argentina, we spent 9 months in strict lockdown). At this point, even if the government asks for another lockdown, people are not going to listen.

Lockdowns are horribly unfair to those that can follow the guidelines about social distances, mask weareing, etc. I'm not sure what your country did, but especially the European lockdowns when you couldn't even walk down the street. So ridiculous.

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

#73

Post by lsllc »

rasz wrote: post #46
lsllc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happened in the US North East, NY, MA, CT, NJ -- the majority (e.g. over 2/3) of deaths are in long term care homes. That is the problem to solve, lockdown or not, in most countries we have utterly failed to protect our most vulnerable people. In fact I'd go as far as arguing that lockdowns and restrictions for the general population have diverted attention and effort from protecting the LTC homes & th…

No, Swedes didnt send infected seniors back to Nursing Homes like Cuomo. https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-new-york-andrew-cu... "March 25 order that sent thousands of recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes at the height of the pandemic."

Regardless, states other than NY also didn't prevent it getting in via staffers, visitors or delivery folks or however it got in there and have a similar, terrible LTC death toll.

As an engineer, if you gave me this problem, I'd secure every LTC home with 24hr police / national guard. All staff would be do 3 weeks on, 3 off, but while "on" (think oil rig workers), living on-site in trailers or [hm]otels, not going home every night (movies do this when filming on location; juries get sequestered for important trials, why can't we do this here?). When staff go on-shift, they must be isolated and then tested before being allowed to go onsite. Deliveries left on the loading dock and properly sanitized, and no visitors -- AT ALL. For Medical emergencies (local FD / EMTs), the resident & 1st responders would have to be isolated for triage, then taken off-site and go back through quarantine / testing to get back in.

It's totally doable and the cost is a heck of a lot less than an economic shutdown / lockdown, or the continued high death toll.

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

#74

Post by krankas »

ruslanbogan wrote: post #70
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

Not really, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

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

#75

Post by thu2111 »

juusto wrote: post #28

It does not surprise me that this approach has failed. Folks don't mask up and, also, do not keep the distance as required. Visit a supermarket, metro or restaurants (yes, restaurants are open!) and you won't see anyone using masks or distancing. Anecdotally my wifes work place only started WFH recommendations once 6 people got infected. On industries such as software almost everyone I know has been WFH since Februar…

Some people are seeing what they want to see: the Swedish approach hasn't failed. Lockdowns have failed.

Remember Sweden was supposed to see 25x hospital overflow and 100,000+ excess deaths according to the models. Instead they have seen a basically normal year in which excess deaths might come in to about 2,000 to 3,000 by the time December is counted.

Meanwhile, lockdowns were meant to just last a few weeks to help ride out a temporary exceedance of hospital capacity. 9 months later people are still locked down with no end in sight, considering that many vaccines don't attempt to halt transmission. Meanwhile there are no correlations visible between severity of lockdown and healthcare outcomes. None. It is a 100% and total failure as a policy.

The media and international establishment types have been pumping out anti-Swedish propaganda for a long time now. You have to double check it carefully to notice it's false. For example, ICU capacity is extremely flexible. Sweden more than doubled it via a variety of mostly administrative means in the first wave and never ran out, even though in the first wave there were more hospitalisations than in the second. The occupancy figures that get thrown around are thus frequently meaningless because the denominator can change so fast. As for "thinking of requesting private nurses to help", is that meant to indicate a crisis? Why should anyone turn their lives upside down to avoid hospital managers having to do such trivial and basic things?

Meanwhile, lockdowns caused a significant fraction (nearly half) of all excess death in the UK in the first wave, and there's significant evidence that COVID is being significantly over-classified even on death certificates in the second wave. The economic destruction will undermine healthcare spending for years or even decades to come. The destruction of confidence in public health officials and 'scientists' is even more severe. It's a catastrophic policy that Sweden correctly ignored, and their reward is a basically normal year:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

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

#76

Post by thu2111 »

evgen wrote: post #35
jmnicolas wrote: post #30

According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Sweden is the 24th country for deaths per million. They're better off than some countries with strict lockdowns like France, Italy etc

If you compare them to neighbors with the same initial infection timelines and vectors, similar population density, cultural norms and habits that were relatively the same, as well as matching socio-economic status you will see that Sweden failed miserably at handling Covid.

More propaganda. You're ignoring the variable that matters most: excess death in the previous year.

https://www.aier.org/article/swedens-dry-tinder-accounts-for...

Include that and you can find the reason for this supposed mystery: Sweden had an extremely low number of deaths in 2019 compared to its neighbours. They'd have regressed to the trend sooner or later anyway, whether it be via flu or natural attrition, but it ended up being COVID.

This comparison also assumes there are somehow great differences between European countries, that Sweden and France are as incomparable as Sweden and Saudi Arabia or India. Nobody ever presents an argument for why that is, so these "don't look at France or the UK, Sweden can only be compared to Norway" argumetns end up looking like motivated reasoning.

Swedish deaths are not going to be anything remarkable this year compared over the last 10 years. Probably 3-5% higher than the 10 year average, so a few thousand deaths, all of whom will have been very old. For a supposedly deadly pandemic that's pretty good.

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

#77

Post by tinus_hn »

ginko wrote: post #3

I don't see how the Swedish king's opinion on this has any more weight than asking a random person on the street.

A difference is that when asked loaded questions like this reported did, he can’t just not answer. ‘People died because of this policy’ what is he going to say? He’s not going to go into some statistics debate to show another point of view, he’s going to say that yes, that’s terrible.

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

#78

Post by libertine »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #71
leokennis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Korea - tremendous testing and good mask adherence Australia - long lockdowns Singapore - probably falls in with China on state surveillance and privacy infringement

Taiwan - has been one of the best examples since the beginning, and a model that was followed by other countries successfully

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

#79

Post by ErikBjare »

leereeves wrote: post #58
kzrdude wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get a job, then it doesn't matter who your family is or if you're the best person for the job(!). If you are lead architect of your company, your job is to give directions etc. Same thing here. Doesn't matter there's others that could replace the king is his job.. he's the current one with that job, so we listen in a way that takes his position into account.

I confess I come from a country that has so little respect for that job that we abolished the position, and I don't know much about Swedish royalty. What qualifications, knowledge, authority, responsibility are associated with that job? And considering that, how much respect does the job deserve?

As a Swede: Practically none, it's all just for show.

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

#80

Post by ErikBjare »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #59
leereeves wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not Swedish. I'm from one of those full-on democracies without a monarch, so take this opinion with some salt. The king isn't an infections disease expert, but he's not an idiot, and he can get any experts he want to tell him what's going on. He's also the one person "in government" who can speak truth about the prime minister without fearing the prime minister's wrath. This lets the king be the one who can say w…

Non-swedes have to understand that our prime minister does not have the power to call for a lockdown. It would require a change in our constitution, which can't be done in a hurry. (there is legislation being worked on to address the cases the shortcomings of the law but it is not being rushed)

Our PM also doesn't have the authority to tell our public health agency what to do, this amounts to ministerial governance, which is illegal [1]. (if the US would have such a law, for example, then we would have seen a lot less involvement of POTUS)

And re our king: he's (arguably) not an idiot, but he's not very bright either. We generally don't take his opinion seriously.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_governance

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