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