Why can't we learn from Sweden? They are now on the safe travel list.

[Treesofwood]

No masks, uninterrupted schooling for children, functioning health service. And we copy Belgium?? Why? And this increase in home made mask wearing. If masks worked they wouldn't suggest using ones made out of an old sock FFS. There would be a minimum standard and clear rules. Sweden are not masking their children. I honestly think the government have either lost their minds or have other reasons for following this route.

Interesting that they are now on the safe fly
list. Does that mean cases are falling?
I argued that they were the other day whilst other Scandinavian countries coming out of lockdown were seeing an increase in cases. I got told I was wrong.

I don’t think we’ll know who got this right until we are through this in a year or so. Every country is different, in terms of population density and healthcare systems. I do think we may look back and see that Sweden got it right. You lockdown and then invariably you will see cases rise as you come out of lockdown. Do you just lengthen the process with all the awful negative impacts of lockdown?

I don’t think we could have coped without some kind of lockdown though. Cases were rising too fast. And our healthcare system would not have coped.

I

Pp is right- the NHS seemed barely to cope with the peak under full lockdown. There’s also a huge societal difference between nations -when it all began, lots of Swedes joked that they and other Scandinavian nations were more or less socially isolating at the best of times so their ‘normal’ was safer than ours...

Seems like they gambled and won. Very low numbers of people in hospital now with a similar low death rate.

Or Guernsey.

uninterrupted schooling for children

That’s not true.

Swedes trust their government. We, in the UK, increasingly don’t.

I think this is significant.

Schooling was interrupted for older children, my friends daughter has only done online learning since March. Sweden is a very different set up to us with a lot more single households plus on the whole when they were told to not do stuff like visit holiday homes they didn't, we carried on until it was forced.

Sweden is a social democracy (the Nordic model), with higher taxes than us and better public services as a result. In this country people repeatedly vote for low-tax governments and wonder why our public services, including the NHS, are underfunded and under-capacity for our size of population.
We are a rich country, we should pay higher taxes and we should enjoy a higher standard of living and better public infrastructure - but the culture of underpaying for things that are for the common good (through taxes for public services) mean that we are disproportionately unhappy and unhealthy with an outdated and crumbling public infrastructure.
That is why the NHS couldn't have coped with anything more in the first wave. Our number of ventilators and ICU beds per head of population was shockingly low.
Also our general state of health (and education) is worse, which doesn't help either.
Sweden was in a better position to avoid a lockdown. We were not in the same position.

Sweden has told all its over 70s to socially isolate and avoid meeting any family/friends indoors. People are actually obeying.

Here they’d tell the government to fuck off.

Population density.

Slight aside, but I am learning Swedish from a very strict older Swedish lady. When I write essays about society I refer to the "Swedish government". She always corrects me to "Swedish state".

I think they don't think of their authorities and leaders as being political. There is a sense that the authorities are there to do the best for the whole country. And the approach would be roughly similar despite the policitians that in power.
Whereas I always feel that our leaders (especially this government), do things for nakedly political reasons and often don't care or think through the consequences for the population. For the UK, it very much matters who is in government.

There is no way we could follow Sweden's way. Our societies are fundamentally too different.

Totally agree with everything Hereinthesticks said.

We can't learn from Sweden because any success they have had (without even getting into the debate of whether they have had any) was predicated on the unusually large amount of trust its people had for its government.

looks around at Johnson and his moonshit promises

Ain't going to happen here.

I think we can potentially learn from Sweden, but, firstly, it’s too early for anyone to claim victory against Covid on behalf of Sweden. They are still living with the restrictions they had back in March (albeit they were never as strict as almost all other places)....

Also, had the Covid-minimising libertarians who are so fervently pro-Sweden actually comprised the population of Sweden, their soft approach would never have worked, as Sweden’s approach required voluntary compliance, not “I’ll do what the hell I want”!

@Derbygerbil

I think we can potentially learn from Sweden, but, firstly, it’s too early for anyone to claim victory against Covid on behalf of Sweden. They are still living with the restrictions they had back in March (albeit they were never as strict as almost all other places)....

Also, had the Covid-minimising libertarians who are so fervently pro-Sweden actually comprised the population of Sweden, their soft approach would never have worked, as Sweden’s approach required voluntary compliance, not “I’ll do what the hell I want”!

I sometimes listen to the highly regarded epidemiologist Michael Osterholm. In the below video at about 10:55 he talks about Sweden and how he thinks it is unlikely that their cases will remain low.

^Does that mean cases are falling?
I argued that they were the other day whilst other Scandinavian countries coming out of lockdown were seeing an increase in cases. I got told I was wrong.^

If you ignore Finland and only look at the past 6 days, then yes. By that doesn't tell you very much.

If you look at any other period apart from the past week, then cases in Sweden have been higher than the other Nordic countries since early April.
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&year=latest&time=2020-04-15..2020-09-10&country=NOR~SWE~DNK~FIN&region=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_deaths&pickerSort=desc

@ohthegoats

Population density.

This.

Sweden has what 3 major cities/metropolitan areas with the remaining land pretty sparsely populated. There is no comparison to the UK.

@BlueBlancmange

Thank you the link. Data indicates that Covid infection in Sweden has spread amongst a sizeable minority but this concentrated in Stockholm. This will slow spread more than in its neighbours that have a much more pristine population.

Can they abandon all measures and get back to normal now? People are still being encouraged to work from home and over 70s encouraged not to mix socially, but it’s human nature to become more lax as the risk appear to diminish. We’ll see....

Their approach is based on long term measures that people can follow for years. Our Lockdown can't be followed for years - its not sustainable so people will break it. We were actually v compliant with it initially.

We are massively in denial, and have encouraged people to think the vaccine is just round the corner, all over by Christmas etc etc. Our measures are unsustainable, hence the shrill 'don't kill granny' messaging we now need to use to try to get compliance

Ideally, we'd have done Denmark and locked down early, but as we started off Sweden we should have stuck with it, not bottled it.

Agree with most PPs on culture, density etc. Sweden also officially acknowledges that there are more than three coronavirus symptoms!

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/covid-19/?exp=68197#_68197
They also clearly say that a lab test is the only way to differentiate what is Covid and to stay at home, even if just a little unwell. They also actively encourage wfh where possible (whereas we at the start of numbers going up tell people to get back to the office). With regard to testing, they openly state they will prioritise if necessary - they do not pretend other symptoms don't exist due to testing capacity - they don't say carry on as normal if you have any symptoms of corona, bar three like the UK does. Wonder why trust in UK government is low

If you feel ill with symptoms including a runny or blocked nose, cough, or fever you should avoid contact with other people.
This also applies if you only feel a little bit unwell. Do not go to work, school or pre-school. It is very important not to risk transmitting the illness to anyone else.

Why can’t we learn from our own mistakes? More specifically, why can’t we learn from Asian countries. This endless comparison with other developed western countries that are essentially making the same mistakes but tweaking around the edges.

There is nothing to aspire to in the Swedish model. There is everything to aspire to in the Asian models where far stricter enforcement and higher compliance means that their economies and health systems have fared far better than Sweden, and crucially the results are far more sustainable because they have the infrastructure to enable it.

Because we are governed by an arrogant self serving government with a Trump attitude of knowing better than everyone else.

In our individualism we are much closer to the US than to Sweden sadly.

Geert Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions is interesting to think about ( in a depressing kind of way) in the context of the different nation responses to coronavirus.

geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/

Here is Hofstede writing specifically about the virus. Worth a read -

geerthofstede.com/boss-blog-9-corona-across-cultures/

@Figmentofmyimagination super interesting you brought this up! Interestingly, we are actually comparatively very close to Sweden in the Hofstede model when you compare against countries in the East, rather than between countries in the West. Considering how well Asian countries have coped, that’s really a better comparison in terms of considering what lessons are to be learned. Their power distance and collectivism specifically play a big role in this, levels of hierarchy (obeying rules and listening to authorities) and extent to which we do things for the group rather than ourselves. Whilst NL is quite different as he mentioned in here, again the differences are fairly nuanced. However, a big factor that isn’t included in this is the extent to which people trust their government (studies have found that this Is well correlated with countries where voter turnout is high, excepting compulsory voting). Sweden has a very high voter turnout compared to the Uk and US, the implications of this being that they are more likely to comply with requests from authorities which do not need to be mandated (eg social distancing rules, which they very much did have, even though people say they don’t... they just didn’t make a big deal of it because they were more inclined to simply get on with things as the believed was right). They consider themselves to be a relatively mature, pragmatic and advanced society in that way, unlike the UK where there is a much greater culture of challenging authoritarian rule and thinking within the confines of individualistic purpose.

So I guess what I’m saying is that culturally the differences between the UK and Sweden are not enough to explain why we did things differently. Don’t forget, most importantly, that we actually started out on exactly the same path as Sweden but u -turned when we realised no one had any faith in govt policy and a backlash was brewing.