Buddy Blank said...
GrizzlyBear said...
Billybob, why do you insist on expanding the boundaries to compare Sweden favorably. Keep it simple, compare Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Immediate neighbors, similar cultures, similar populations and population density, similar initial exposures. There is no better comparative data anywhere in the world. Compare them in terms of their response, death rates, deaths per capita, economic contraction, whatever.
Lastly, the measures that Sweden did take are unique to Sweden. Those measures would never ever work in the US.
I believe he does so, keeps taking a bite at the apple re: Sweden, and places he claims did little as far as social distancing, because he supports that stance, but doesn't want to come right out and say it, because most people don't support it. Of course, I don't know that for sure. Just my two cents.
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Not quite correct, Buddy. I don't think it is really a mystery why I do what I do. Because, I am almost certain(in another thread somewhere) I have stated before that I DON"T KNOW what the correct answer is ( i.e. re: fairly strict lock downs vs doing not much). And, true enough, one reason I am not as certain as most of you guys seem to be is because Sweden- alone among the nations of the world? - and a few of our states, have done much less in this regard, and either done quite well or not suffered near as much as predicted. My lack of certainty about
the wisdom of the path most taken seems logical enough to me, is it not? Especially considering the cost of doing what we have done?
You say I keep taking a bite out of the apple, but I did not start this thread and was sort of late commenting on it. But, when I read the OP, I remembered reading that very article and thinking "wait a minute, is that correct?". Since I had been following statistics for the USA and several other nations of the world, it did not seem to me there had been some sudden worsening in Sweden enough to cause them to think "Boy have we screwed up". As Stephen S. pointed out, those quotes were taken a bit out of context, and the man had some words later to clear that up a bit.
So, let us review one more time. Looking at simple facts, not going by emotion or our bias . ( go back to my previous supplied links for the data)
1: Is Sweden suffering more than all of the other nations which took a much stricter approach to closing "non-essential" businesses and such? Not at all. I think Sweden has moved up a little bit the last couple of weeks, but is still #5 (NOT #1) among European nations and the USA, and is almost tied with France at #6(death rate per million).
2: Is Sweden suddenly suffering a huge increase in deaths as the bill for their stupidity comes due? Not in the least as far as I can tell, despite headlines about
having the highest death rates in the world over some several day period. Go back and look at the links provided, where they are keeping tabs on all nations. Sweden peaked in mid April (for deaths), and the trend has been down overall ever since. The disaster that was supposed to come upon Sweden for her folly simply has not happened, not yet anyway. But, who knows what tomorrow might bring?
3: Grizz keeps asking me "Billybob, why do you insist on expanding the boundaries to compare Sweden favorably.". Well, Grizz, I admit the fact the Sweden's most immediate neighbors have done much better seems to prove that Sweden was stupid. And maybe she was. But what about
comparing NY and NJ to either NH, Maine or Canada? All of those latter have a death rate per million vastly lower than NY or NJ( much bigger difference than Sweden and her border countries), and they are very close by and similar in many ways, even the other country, Canada. Also, in Europe, these countries are not very far apart. What are the factors that give vast differences in death rates(per million population) between these states and Canada which are so close together. And they all, NY/NJ/NH?Canada more or less, "closed down" more so than Sweden, but they have differences in death rates even greater than Seden has with her border countries.
As for the actual countries near by(but not quite bordering) to Sweden, none of these Euro nations are very far apart compared to various states here in the USA. Belgium is a mere 300 miles from Sweden, and is the worst (not Sweden, but Belgium) in the world with a death rate over twice that of Sweden. The Netherlands is even closer to Sweden, maybe a 2 hour drive here in the states, and they are in 7th place compared to Sweden's 5th and France's 6th(those 2 almost tied).
The UK as a whole is near the top at at 600(way more than Sweden) but within the UK, Ireland's death rate is a lot lower, which would mean that the rest of the UK death rate is even higher by comparison. So it does not seem all that far out to me to just compare Sweden to other nearby European countries as well as the US, all with modern western style medicine, and see that Sweden is by no means the worse, YET. And compared to the NE USA, there is no comparison. In fact, a few states in the NE account for the majority of US deaths. How can we talk about
what a disaster it has been for Sweden when we have NY, with a death rate of over 1500 per million(and forget about
NYC)?
4: Have the US states that have done the least also done the worst? Not at all, in fact quite the opposite. And as I pointed out earlier about
UT, most of UT's population is in one big group of towns near SLC/Ogden/Provo and all of the little towns connecting them. They have not done much compared to most, and have about
the lowest death rate. They are one of maybe 4 in a similar situation.
5: And one more time, I have to point out again: all the numbers are not in yet. Sweden may soon leap into the #1 spot for being the worst on earth. However, I don't think they are much worried about
some sudden big increase in deaths on their horizon, unlike us. Our death rates have been dropping, their death rates have been dropping. We(and most of the world) are trying to come "out of hiding" and praying there won't be a huge spike(especially considering the riots and looting, not much social distancing during those), so who can really say what the final results of all of this will be? I can't.
6: Whatever the final result of all of this, millions of jobs have been lost, and innumerable small businesses have gone under, while the big boys- those "essential" businesses, have boomed. Have you noticed that despite the mind boggling loss of jobs and incomes and health insurance, that the stock market has, after a very short and shaky period- has done quite well? You could not go to church(they would arrest you or give tickets, even with parking lot services- people staying in their cars! ) or the corner store, but you certainly can go to Home Depot and WM all day every day, and of course order from Amazon for home delivery. Some of the biggest have done very well indeed. I wonder how many people will die due to loss of health insurance and delayed medical diagnoses and treatment? Maybe that should be added to the CV-19 death totals? Except I suppose for Sweden. If people suffer economic loss over there, it will be because their trading partners have suffered, and no escaping that. If your neighbors go down, you are probably going to suffer as well. EDIT: Oh yes, I forgot, the trillions of new debt we have added trying to lessen the blow to the millions of newly unemployed, plus other favorite items to spend on. That is another cost to our approach that I suppose Sweden will not suffer.
7: Lastly, none of this was really needed, there did not have to be all of these deaths, shutdown or no shutdown. People would rather force businesses to close and force people to stay at home until a poorly tested vaccine is available which the world will be forced to take, than inform them about
certain measures every one could take that would slash the death rates. Same thing applies every year during the flu season. No matter how much evidence piles up year after year, our authorities simply refuse to even mention these things. For whatever bizarre reason, they simply will not tell us, and if they possibly can, they will deny the evidence, claiming there is no evidence. So, I am disgusted with all of them. BTW, I had been hearing how a certain some one would be responsible for many deaths because he admitted he was taking hydroxychloroquine AND ZINC. Because now people would take this drug with such horrible SEs, because he did, and die. Maybe not:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-22/hydroxychloroquine-linked-to-deaths-heart-risks-in-covid-studyBut whether this CHEAP drug helped or not, either way, there are even cheaper and safer options that they could have told us about
, and refused do so. So it seems to me to be pissing in the river to be overly concerned about
if the Swedes are horrible and have killed a lot of people by taking a different approach than us, OR NOT. Both the Swedes and us could have saved untold thousands of lives, very easily, with or without the unemployment of millions and adding trillions to our debt. And we simply refused to do so.
Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 6/7/2020 8:55:00 AM (GMT-6)