They were probably old or sick, anyway. If only they'd been into wellness, paid more attention to their vitamin D levels, and not been born with preexisting conditions. 🤷🏾♀️
I had this debate at peak Covid with a libertarian "friend" on Facebook who has a math PhD and is rich from finance. He said you can't compare Sweden to the other Scandinavian countries. He said the best comp for Sweden is Arizona.
Clowns like cherry-picking, even if it means comparing apples to oranges.
They simply didn’t want Sweden compared to its closest geographical and cultural neighbors because they wanted to drive forward an ideological-driven narrative rather than get checked by a data-driven comparison.
Yes, it changed policy/rules at various times during the pandemic. And Sweden was “locked down” with pandemic rules even after Denmark had opened up for partying.
A view into developments in Sweden during the pandemic:
I spent most of the pandemic going back and forth between the US, Denmark and Sweden even when the airports were ghost-towns and most people in these countries couldn’t travel between them.
genuinely surprised that paper got published as anything other than a throwaway blog post. its quite clear they never bothered to look at the source data, the paper doesn't have enough detail to make a case either way, the whole thing is a fucking embarassment
Yeah, the laissez-faire "let it rip, who cares, it's only old people & they're all gonna be dead within 6 months anyway" discourse was terribly discouraging. And seeing they're not taking away the right message?? Makes it worse
Also when they say "lock down", Sweden still asked their citizens to social distance, they ran soccer games without crowds, etc. All of which Americans would consider "lock down".
Anything bad that happened already happened and was actually inscribed upon the bones of history by the Fates, it was impossible to avoid and immoral to try (but not if it’s something that upsets me)
That said, I don’t think we take lawyers nearly as seriously outside their realm. But the way that economists are CONVINCED they can use their methods to answer ANY problem I think is unparalleled by any field.
Isn’t 90% of pre-QAnon US government made up of lawyers, and aren’t almost all of the pundits lawyers? Don’t lawyers get into big CEO positions way too often? I think we take them way too seriously outside of their area of expertise way too often. But I would never talk to a cop without one.
I blame econometrics specifically. “But it’s numbers and statistical models so it’s scientific!” really does seem to do a number on some people’s brains.
Really want to see the Florida version of this. Just looking at a graph, their 2020 and 2021 mask-off summers created a rise in deaths that rival New York’s first few months in the alpha wave.
It’s bizarre. In the most recent New Yorker, Daniel Immerwahr (who is not included in the contributors’ list, so I have no idea who he is), also claims that Sweden had the lowest covid death rate in Europe. This week’s tinfoil hat conspiracy belief?
Their argument (which I don't agree with) is that removing lockdowns was always going to happen, so you can add the post-reopening deathrate to the comparison, and then Sweden's good.
However, Norway showed that it was possible to eradicate the disease with lockdowns, the problem was re-importing.
that entire article is bonkers. "Democrats liked RFJ jr when he was against big oil, so why are they against him when he is a vaccine conspiracy nut?!" level of writing.
some people talked about the mental health effects of telling people to stay home, but the pandemic was stressful in and of itself, it feels like blaming the person pulling the lever in the trolley problem for killing a person even if the alternative is worse
Comments
They simply didn’t want Sweden compared to its closest geographical and cultural neighbors because they wanted to drive forward an ideological-driven narrative rather than get checked by a data-driven comparison.
-Every article targeted at rich decision-makers
A view into developments in Sweden during the pandemic:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/nordic-region/2014705-coronavirus-sweden.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45934-2
2020 me: 20 minutes of math later....."wow there's a lot of dipshits out there."
2024 me, after Trump re-elected: "confirmed"
Level: impossible
Major, major Dunning Kruger sufferers.
(And I say that as someone who studied economics, works as a software engineer, and has the law as an area of interest.)
that translates to about 70 preventable deaths per day at the peak and about 40 on average across the outbreak
However, Norway showed that it was possible to eradicate the disease with lockdowns, the problem was re-importing.