Five Years On: How Sweden and New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Fared
How have countries fared five years after they took differing approaches to restrict their activities? Senior fellow at the Cato Institute Johan Norberg talks about Sweden’s “less restrictive approach” and its surprisingly low death rates. Halfway across the world in New Zealand, chief economist for ANZ Bank Sharon Zollner reflects on the country’s economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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21 Comments
Only talking to a man working for an paid by a Libertarian thinktank is biased AF, the long and the short of it is that per million people Sweden had twice as many deaths as its nearest neighbors of Denmark, Finland, and Norway. The Swedish government happily let those people die, and its unsurprising that a Cato institute stoodge would be patting himself on the back about it >.>
Here in New Zealand I can confirm that most people I know who took the 'medicine' are very ill and always tired now they are even calling it 'long flu' basically gaslighting them while they shrivel away, me and my wife took the Swedish approach and never took the stuff, we are never sick still and our family (kids, siblings, parents) all have health problems. go figure
Sweden’s approach would not have worked in the US because American people have no regard for the safety of themselves or others. Many Swedes would stay at home as much as possible, wore masks even if you didn’t have to, kept themselves at a distance from others, etc. We recognized the potential risk to ourselves our loved ones, and even people we didn’t know personally and acted accordingly with common sense. Most of us at least. You could not expect an American to:
1. Care about the well-being even of people they don’t personally know
2. Act with common sense.
And hence this approach would not have worked.
5:06 "It's easy with hindsight to spot the mistakes that were made". It's only hindsight if you ignore the preparations that were already in place for this eventuality, silence the voices of those describing exactly what these mistakes would lead to, de-platform and censor ALL (ultimately correct) experts who tried to warn of the errors and of course, knowingly lie to and gaslight your population. Ooopsies
Common sense. You can not hide from a pandemic. You can only postponed it so not everybody get it at the same time.
Sweden was absolutely not ridiculed in Texas .. greetings my Swedish friends from Texas.
No one is talking about Taiwan how it balanced things very well, with no lockdowns and schools open; except for its terrible decision to vaccinate children(the safest cohort ),and excessive focus on masks. What nobody's talking about ids the massive corruption of governments by the US drug companies and the medical tyranny imposed by them unjustly. Top medical protocols were ignored, all the prohibitions have now been proven false and those experts vindicated.
Public Health r*pes the globe.
It was not like there were no rules here. But most of it relied on recommendations, which were followed to some degree. Public life continued, but to a lesser extent than pre-Covid. The main benefit this had IMO was trust and avoiding polarisation as it happened in many other countries. In Sweden, the pandemic could have lasted several years longer, and people would have gone along. Many other countries would have imploded, so high were tensions. You also didn’t get large anti-vax communities. And by the way, I am not saying that everyone loved the Swedish approach! There were many Swedes who thought stricter measures were needed. But the tone always stayed respectful, and Swedish institutions kept their political capital. I think many other countries fired away all their political capital they had, and will face major challenges if another pandemic was to come, because many people will simply not go along.
They also kept most of the kids in school which was huge.
The takeaway from this sorry story is the amount of propaganda aimed at Sweden and others who were expressing the moderate and established approach to managing such a situation. Why?
Its funny the Red states in the USA ,also did a similar path to Sweden ..
At first Trump believed the medical establishment ,but they had to say Trump was critical of Sweden …Not really true we/Americans could care less what other country's do, the European seem slow to realize this! 🙂
We swedes got sooo much critisiscm and pure hate during the pandemic. Look now. I hope all the haters feeling bad now.
What if there is a virus that affects only white peoples, (cystic fibrosis )how would they react ?🧐 if it was killing by thousands.
2:53 Data from Poland is skewed. Doctors in Poland were getting a huge amount of money for working with covid patients so many deaths were attributed to covid even though the sub-cause was completely different.
Most people also took the vaccine even if it was a individual choice. Also good to note: That free movment is enshrined in our constitution so the goverment actually could not shoutdown part of Sweden.
The biggest problem overlooked in NZ was that of the fiscal spending, most of it resulted in no real outcome for the country. Most of it went to consulting firms discussing ideas. For example $1bln was spent on mental health and this only delivered about 300 extra bed nights. $3.33mln per bed night
People tend to forget that our "open" approach meant a complete lockdown on concerts, theater, sports.
I worked with freelancing musicians who hade to sell their apartment and move home to their parents. More than 30% of peofessional musicians had to leave the trade. Support money was not given to personal companies (enskild firma) only inc:s. Almost all freelancers have a personal company. For culture it was a lockdown.
I think the other longterm effect of the covid pandemic also needs to be taken into account. In Sweden schools, daycare and such public services were kept open. My daughter, who was 3 when the pandemic hit was allowed to be in kindergarten with other kids her age. My son at the age of 7 got to go to his first couple of years in school and be taught in a classroom, while in other non-Swedish countries teaching was done remotely.
We were allowed to go to restaurants(with limitations), but as a hole restraint was upheld by the Swedish people in respect to our fellow citizens. No-one wanted to be the person responsible for spreading covid to colleagues, friends or family. The government showed trust in the Swedish people to do the right thing and in my, highly biased Swedish mind, the Swedish people upheld our part of the bargain. It made me proud of my fellow Swedes and our government for showing this trust.
As a Swede currently staying in Australia, Sweden had the best approach to C-19. We are quite rational people, seldom panicking. We watched the rest of the world panicking while we just adjusted to the new reality while taking some precautionary measures. We believed we were right. In the end, we were proven right.
Anders Tegnell should be Time magazine person of the year for 2020. Sweden was the only country that stuck to the strategy on how to react in a pandemic , agreed on by like all European countries, and it was all because of him.
It is hard to compare different cultures and peoples. For example, if the US did the same thing as Sweden, lot more people would die as Americans are more social. Also wayyyyy more unhealthy and obese.