Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
Comparing different approaches to Covid-19 containment | 56 comments (56 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Sweden and Covid-18 (none / 0)
Sweden also has a couple of natural advantages - very low density of population outside a few main cities, very high proportion of single person households, a good public health and social case system. Correct me if I am wrong, but I get the impression that social mores also included less protracted hugging and kissing than in Spain, for example. So social distancing may come a little more naturally.

I also get the sense that there is still a relatively high level of social cohesion and respect for rules etc. in Sweden which means social distancing doesn't have to be enforced quite so much as in other countries. In Spain thousands of fines have been handed out to people breaking the rules, in France you have to fill out paperwork, in the UK there has been some slightly heavy handed policing.

Ireland also followed a largely more voluntary approach with "advice" rather than legal enforcement the norm. Emergency legislation giving the police powers of enforcement has only recently been activated, and so far has been sparingly used.

Generally speaking government and public health communications have been good and have engendered trust, although this was not helped when the Minister for Health mistakenly referred to Covid-19 having 18 progenitors. He thought the 19 referred to the number of previous corona virus diseases, not the year in which it emerged!

That put him in the same boat as Trump advisor Kelly-Amm Conway in the good old USA. In fairness he has abjectly apologised for his mistake. He wouldn't have gotten away with trying to brazen it out, Trump style.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Apr 24th, 2020 at 01:52:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Sweden and Covid-18 (none / 1)
Yes, that is all true. For example, you do not sit down next to a stranger on the bus if there is any seat left where you don't have to sit next to somebody.

I think the main disadvantage Sweden has had was a large number of starting cases in early March as there is a one week Spring break in late february where you traditionally go skiing. And being able to afford going to the Alpes instead of our domestic mountains, is a sign of wealth. So we had a bunch of conspicous consumers going back and forth to Italy there. I think that is one reason - in addition to more public transport - that Stockholm has been worst hit. I was surprised that there was no quarantine, I think that would have postponed and flattened the outbreak here. That would probably been considered extreme then, but that was almost months ago.

Politically, when it comes to the disease the government is mostly pointing at the expert agency and Anders Tegnell, the state epidemologist, has become a household name (I doubt people knew we even had a state epidemologist before this). So the prime minister holds speaches about the importance of following the experts advice.

by fjallstrom on Fri Apr 24th, 2020 at 02:12:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Sweden and Covid-18 (4.00 / 2)
The Grim Truth About the "Swedish Model" - Hans Bergstrom - Project Syndicate
But let's not turn causality on its head. The government did not consciously design a Swedish model for confronting the pandemic based on trust in the population's ingrained sense of civic responsibility. Rather, actions were shaped by bureaucrats and then defended after the fact as a testament to Swedish virtue.

... Through it all, Sweden's government remained passive. That partly reflects a unique feature of the country's political system: a strong separation of powers between central government ministries and independent agencies. And, in "the fog of war," it was also convenient for Löfven to let Tegnell's agency take charge. Its seeming confidence in what it was doing enabled the government to offload responsibility during weeks of uncertainty. Moreover, Löfven likely wanted to demonstrate his trust in "science and facts," by not - like US President Donald Trump - challenging his experts.

... Now that COVID-19 is running rampant through nursing homes and other communities, the Swedish government has had to backpedal.

But how is it gonna play out in the long term? Final tally is still a while off. Meanwhile, focusing on better protecting those care homes could do the trick. But there may also be a darker sociological explanation for the approach:



Schengen is toast!
by epochepoque on Fri Apr 24th, 2020 at 11:05:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Comparing different approaches to Covid-19 containment | 56 comments (56 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Display: