So Sweden's plan was not quite so successful after all?

[goldenharvest]

Now that winter is looming, their rates have rocketed and they are bringing in restrictions. Clearly the advice to socially distance and wash hands hasn't worked.

@WhoopsSomethingWentWrong

It’s s Sweden you always get from the right/herd immunity brigade. New Zealand is the opposite end of the spectrum

I’m aware of that, of course.
My point is that you have people in one breath saying ‘we’re nothing like Sweden, we couldn’t have followed their approach for x, y and z reasons’ then in the next breath saying ‘we should have done what New Zealand did, we’re both islands’. When the fact is, of course, that we’re absolutely nothing like either country, and neither approach would work for us.
Neither did the one we actually took, but that’s a different thread.

That's fair enough. You can't compare us to NZ.

However, the idea that 'we should have done what Sweden did' doesn't make any rational sense when we already have the worst death toll in Europe and quite an unhealthy population (obesity levels, respiratory illnesses etc). That's before you factor in the high density population (the population of London alone isn't far off Sweden) and behavioural differences (raves, mass parties, countless protests, thousands and thousands flocking to the same bit of beach whenever the sun comes out).

I agree with you that we equally can't be compared to NZ either as a country. The difference is though that shutting the borders (or at least having testing at airports and/or enforcing quarantine) would have made more rational sense than either following Sweden or doing what we did.