Sweden is going it alone in attacking the coronavirus situation, keeping most of life going, encouraging social distancing, isolating the sick and seniors homes. They now have restricted public gatherings to no more than 50. They expect their economy will not emerge unscathed, but they are not shutting everything down either.
I’ve shared several articles on Facebook on this topic and a friend shared another one just tonight. I thought I’d do a little comparison on the worldometer charts, and see where some relatively close countries are faring, adding in the UK as a more severely hit comparison.
Here is the article that got me started on this tonight:
No lockdown here: Sweden defends its more relaxed coronavirus strategy
Here are a few earlier articles I shared:
Explaining the science behind Sweden’s relaxed coronavirus approach
As the rest of Europe lives under lockdown, Sweden keeps calm and carries on
Ok, now for the comparison charts (from worldometer, linked above):
All three of the comparison nations are using more stringent shutdowns. The key number to compare, I think is Cases/1M pop and Deaths/1M pop.
So far, Sweden seems not much worse off than any of these countries.
Compared to the whole world (the numbers in the bottom row in each picture), all of these countries seem high, but that is probably misleading. I am guessing that more urban nations with a more mobile population will have higher rates than nations like those in Africa, perhaps.
Anyway, it is interesting to watch. My opinion is that the total shutdown is unnecessary and will hurt us way more than the Swedish approach would do in the long run. Only time will tell, but I think we are not well served by our government and especially the media at this time.
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