Would you rather be here or in Sweden?

[Forgetaboutme]

There's been a lot of talk about the way Sweden are handling the coronavirus situation. Schools still open, bars n clubs plus shops still open. The vulnerable being shielded and the rest social distancing or working from home where possible.

Would you rather be here on lockdown? Or in Sweden?

Do you feel safer on lockdown or if you lived somewhere like Sweden would you have been happy to live how they are at the moment?

Just bored here and wondering what people thought.

Sweden appears to be a week or two behind where we are in UK plus they also have a very different sort of population density. Majority of cases are in Stockholm, unsurprisingly, but with news of virus outbreak many people have made their way to summer houses. It's not the same sort of financial/status symbol as it is here, it's a common thing.

Anyway, their rate of infection is climbing more than rate of surrounding Nordic countries (who adopted more stringent measures) so you can probably expect to see some adaptations to plans from them soon. I think they got to emergency legislation about 3 days ago, so that maybe helps put it in context.

In the next week or two sweden is going to take a turn which I think will be make it break.
We've been hiding away all winter, but the last week has been beautiful weather so Swedes have emerged from hibernation, and either filled the bars and restaurants of the cities, or fled out to the country and coast.
This weekend with Easter will see lots of gatherings too.

When we see what effect that has had in a week or two...then I'll decide if I still feel pretty safe here.

Make or break*

My Swedish colleagues definitely don't feel so safe after watching our pan-European teams collapse in various different ways @outfoxed

Look to Denmark, Norway and other Nordic countries for insight if you need to. It's plain mental to think Sweden will be different.

And look fo major Swedish companies. They're not messing about either.

Oh I'm well aware this isn't good.
But in reality, life here hasn't changed much for lots of people. I live rurally, everything's still open, in fact my local supermarket is doing Easter egg hunts all week sending hoarders of kids running all over town. It's easy to forget what's happening in the rest of the world sometimes when everything around you is business as almost usual. That's why I think the probable incoming explosion of cases will be an important factor in people starting to question Tegnell a bit.

Yeah. We felt like that a few weeks ago too. Even in the rural parts of U.K.

Our govt played it down and now we're losing 900+ people in 24 hours. Worse than anything in Italy or Spain, the countries they criticised or dismissed for having inferior health service infrastructure. There's the facts.

C. Iceland

In England are you only recording deaths that occur in hospital? do any nursing home deaths or anything else get counted? It seems here in Australia and in Ireland lots of deaths occur in nursing homes and are counted in the numbers.

I would not like to be in either Sweden or the UK right now. I am okay with how we are handling it here in Australia, we locked down the borders too late, but we are doing the right things now.

I’d rather be here tbh... although I’d actually rather not be in the U.K.

It's really hard to say.

I'm in Korea and we never had a lockdown here. Of course, we were basically the second country to have a big outbreak but the government got right out in front of it with rigorous testing and tracking - every day there are updates of where new patients have been so that you can go and be tested if you were near them. They trace their actions by credit card (couldn't happen in the west, privacy laws). Everyone can be tested, there are drive through places everywhere. It costs about 70 pounds or free if you get a note from the doctor.

There was a big outbreak in Daegu after a woman from a cult spread it around and there was so much negative outcry around her that I think it made people very conscious of not being like her - Korea is a very shame based culture and no one wants to be the wanker that infected hundreds of people. So as soon as they have symptoms most people will go and get tested and isolate themselves.

There is also strict quarantining at the airport and everyone arriving must isolate for 14 days.

Most places are still open, but you have to get your temperature taken and write your details down so that if there is an outbreak they can contact you.

Schools and universities are still closed and many people are working from home but many have gone back to work too.

We are reminded to social distance but tbh I see most people not doing so. Kids out playing daily, underground is full, people in restaurants...

Whether this is working or not remains to be seen but so far we're down to around 30 new cases a day in the whole country and there has only been a single death in Seoul this whole time - for a city of 10 million people who are absolutely crammed in, this is pretty astonishing. The fact that healthcare is far superior here when compared to the UK which has also had an impact. But generally I think the aggressive testing and tracking has worked pretty well.

personally I'd rather see a stricter lockdown because it is a little scary to see people acting so normally when friends and family back in the UK are living under such strict rules but so far there have been no new outbreaks so 🤷‍♀️

Something else to add - in Korea, people go to the doctor at the drop of a hat. I have literally sneezed and had colleagues tell me to see a doctor before. Because of one sneeze! So I think generally people are going to the doctor at even the first or smallest sign of symptoms and that means they have been isolated quickly.

Honestly, it was awful to see the west not take this seriously for weeks while people were dying here, and it sticks in my craw that those same countries are now blaming China for this. I'm not saying they have no part in it, but western governments need to take responsibility for their useless response too.

Sweden...I think we are massively mishandling this. Protect the vulnerable PROPERLY, spend however many millions/billions it takes on ramping up healthcare...then let the rest of us keep the economy running. The economic impact of this is going to cause exponentially more deaths and suffering than the virus ever will.

If someone dies of a heart attack but Covid19 in their system are they classed as dying from a heart attack or covidm19. Have they carried out an autopsy’s on all the 100,000 people that have died. So did they die with the virus in their system but the cause of death was something else or was covid19 the only cause of death?

Sweden.

Not Sweden no. They are probably at the stage we were when everyone was still fairly relaxed about it. See what happens in a few weeks.

The absolute Swedish death rate is still pretty low and they are shielding the elderly

Two things...

Firstly, the “current” death rate is a very poor way to measure success in dealing with CV due to the 3-4 delay between infection and death. If the UK had said 3 weeks ago, just before it went into lockdown: “our deaths are only 280, that’s way lower than Italy’s so we must be doing the right thing!” it would have been a catastrophic misjudgment. I fear Sweden has made this mistake and they are now way beyond where we were 3 weeks ago. It’s not today’s figures that are the main concern, it’s where they are likely to be in a month.

Secondly, if CV runs barely controlled in the general population, it is extremely difficult,
If not impossible, to effectively shield the most vulnerable. Someone in residential care, or requiring home care or chemotherapy can’t cut themselves off from humanity for months and still live! I believe Sweden’s residential care homes are experiencing lots of problems in this regard.

Isn't the point that due to their healthcare they have a healthy population and their health services can cope - allegedly better than ours?

Spain was top of the league for the health of its people recently. It didn’t stop CV hitting it hard. And no country has nearly enough medical capacity to manage if CV is just allowed to run rampant.

Unfortunately being a healthy nation doesn’t help that much as it means you have a larger elderly population.

Sweden
Death rates will probably end up the same more or less but without the cowardly fusspotting, and stasi like behaviour of the protofascist little Englanders. Their economy won't be in ruins. Ironically of course they will then be expected to bail out the Southern Europeans on their two year 'lockdown til it's safe to come out'

I'd rather be in New Zealand ONE DEATH

SWEDEN!!!!!
I would do anything to be in Sweden right now

Id rather be in Singapore or Hong kong. Early lockdown = no virus.

The point of the strict lockdown in China was to try to stop it spreading worldwide. I think it's safe to say that strategy failed.

@Florrieboo the daily stats only include deaths in hospital but ONS are releasing deaths weekly (Tuesdays I believe) which include community deaths too.

There's a thread called something like 'daily stats, graphs & figures' which explains all the different numbers around