Re: COVID
It’s clear that Sweden was probably the country that reacted most sensibly of all to the pandemic, with measures that were largely proportionate to the size of the threat.
Well. What you are not saying is that there has not been a day without restrictions in Sweden since March 2020. During a few periods of this time they have even had harder restrictions than their neighbours Norway and Denmark. If they had not had these restrictions, more people would have died.
What is your obsession with Sweden anyway? Could it be you don't want us to remember the military trucks driving out scores of dead from Bergamo, or the stacks of missing bodies found in trucks in New York? Instead of Sweden, why don't we instead talk about Peru, where 0.6 % of the population died from alpha/delta, or Bulgaria or Hungary, where close to 0.5 % of the population died from alpha/delta. All points to alpha/delta having a mortality of around 1 % if not for lockdowns and other measures.
You end by concluding that the higher mortality in the US than in Sweden, was caused by the "disastrous effect of lockdowns on public health". This is where you prove your insanity, or, to give you the benefit of the doubt, your belief that you are only talking to retarded Americans:
Around 150 countries around the world have had lockdowns, and most of these countries have experienced far fewer deaths than Sweden. After the alpha wave, which is where Sweden's course of action diverged most from its neighbours, the deaths per capita in Sweden were 5-10 times higher than its neighbours Denmark, Norway and Finland, which all implemented hard lockdowns in spring 2020. At this point Sweden was in the top-10 of countries with most deaths per capita in the world.
Since they aligned their restrictions to similar levels as their neighbours, at points even harsher, and with the rollout of vaccines, Sweden has steadily improved. Some Swedes kept saying that the neighbouring countries would catch up to the death totals over time. Well they were wrong, because here we are, with an Omikron strain that does not kill anybody that have had their 3 or 4 shots.
Thanks for this quality post. Wanted to reply to Arrie but you saved me at least 30 minutes of my life. 100% correct and based on facts only.