Chris Hayes is pushing his bullshit on Sweden again, both the lie about herd immunity, and about

[Celerity]

our economy being just as trashed as the rest of the EU. I have even seen it labelled as close to the WORST in the EU. That is utter tosh as well.

I am at wit's end that these dual lies keep getting shovelled in the US media. So much disinformation about Sweden out there, especially in the US media, some of it just flat out lies. The worst thing that happened to us, framing wise, was when bad faith actors (with ZERO knowledge of what was actually going on) on the RW started trying to us us as a cudgel to beat their enemies in the US over the head with. I have posted so so many updates over the past 6 months, but it often gets lost in the fog, and also many take an a priori hostile stance in terms of anything to do with Sweden and COVID-19.


Herd immunity was never the primary goal here in Sweden. I keep seeing this posted over and over and it is simply incorrect. It has come up over and over again because some officials have started talking about Stockholm (where we live) reaching this level by the end of May. That has been misconstrued by so many to think that the drive for herd immunity is the principal core strategy, when it is not.

Hallengren: Sweden Not Pursuing Herd Immunity

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-04-29/hallengren-sweden-not-pursuing-herd-immunity

Sweden’s Minister for Health and Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren, explains the country is not pursuing a policy of ’herd immunity’ when it comes to coronavirus and that looser restrictions in Sweden are being used because of how long they may have to stay in place. She tells Daybreak Europe’s Caroline Hepker and Roger Hearing it is too early to make comparisons about which countries have made the right policy choices in addressing the pandemic.

Running time 11:20

(Audio at the link.)


Another huge myth, pushed by cheap, shoddy journalism is that it is the Wild West here, and basically the entire country is running around like banshees with zero mitigation actions. This is utter tosh.

see this article for further drilling down:

'The biggest myth about Sweden is that life is going on as normal'

https://www.thelocal.se/20200424/interview-isabella-lovin-coronavirus-the-biggest-myth-about-sweden-is-that-life-is-going-on-as-normal

also

Sweden to shut bars and restaurants that ignore coronavirus restrictions

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-stockholm/sweden-to-shut-bars-and-restaurants-that-ignore-coronavirus-restrictions-idUSKCN2262AX


Now I shall deal again with the very bad aspects of what happened, as I am in no way try to sugarcoat anything


Our large fail, a horrid tragedy (and the main reason we are so badly off in terms of deaths per million compared to Denmark, Norway, and Finland) was our nursing homes and our scattered site elderly care. They account for as much as 70% (there is a shedload of argument here atm, some say it is even higher, some say it is lower, around 55-60%, but certainly it is higher than our neighbour Nordic nations) of our deaths en toto. We (unfortunately) had a FAR more lax system in terms of visitation/protocols and in terms of higher staff turnover than the other Nordics do with their elderly-care homes. Those arguments and finger-pointings are now (and have been for months, even as the deaths has basically slowed to a drip) the hottest topic in the whole country atm. They fucked up bad.

Several months ago, on SVT (our state TV,) a group of doctors and healthcare experts (these fall into the group that say it is around 70% of all deaths) said we if had similar nursing home deaths and overall elderly deaths per million rates that Denmark has, our deaths per million OVERALL (for all age cohorts) would only be a wee bit higher than the Danes. They also said that if you adjust for the vastly increased level of COVID-19 in the immigrant/refugee saturated areas, and make their percentages of population the same as Denmark or Norway (let alone Finland which has by far the fewest number of immigrants and refugees as a % in all of the Nordics, most who go there are only going to immediately flood over the Finnish/Swedish border, as Denmark cut them off down south at the Öresund) that our overall death (when combined with a similar elderly care death rate as discussed above) would not only be lower than Denmark, but would be approaching Norway levels.

They also said that other Nordics are being far more conservative than Sweden has been with their COVID-19 death attributions so all the other Nordics have higher death rates than they are letting on (that war of words has been going on for months, and has gotten REALLY nasty at times, especially with Denmark versus Sweden, quelle surprise), All the other Nordics have a very hostile stance in regards to Sweden in terms of our refugee/immigration policy. That group (the refugees/immigrants) have also be really hard hit here as well, as they do not practice social distancing to a level anywhere near to what the native Swedes do, plus they are less well-off income wise, and also health wise (for a number of reasons.) That is the reason for the lowered death rates when adjustments are made for an apples-to-apples comparison, as opposed to the chalk and cheese raw numbers that are rammed in our face far too often. I do, however have to add, that ANY discussion, as I said above, of immigration/refugee here is Sweden has been a minefield for ages, although the Syrian conflict several years back, finally broke the silence (at peak, we were taking in the US equivalent of 3 to 5 MILLION a month and the far RW white nationalist Sweden Democrats (SD, in Swedish Sverigedemokraterna) were surging towards a historic, terrifying victory, until some of the other parties finally caved in and slowed the inflows and changed the laws (to a point).

(A bit of an aside, SD, whilst hardcore RW, white nationalists, are also pretty much VERY anti-Russian as well, for centuries-long historic reasons that are almost never talked about in the foreign press as well. We do have some hardcore, actual neo nazi parties who DO love Russia, but they are microscopic in size. The biggest, Alternativ för Sverige, has only around 1200 members, most other have less than 100)


more on the false charge of herd immunity being our basic strategy

Sweden hits back at Trump's 'herd immunity' criticism

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/sweden-hits-back-at-trump-s-herd-immunity-criticism-1.1419502

Sweden’s foreign minister Ann Linde has dismissed criticism by U.S. president Donald Trump concerning the country’s outlier strategy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. “He has used a factual error,” the minister said in an interview on broadcaster TV4 on Wednesday. Her comments follow Trump’s remarks a day earlier when he told reporters that Sweden is trying to achieve “herd immunity” and “is suffering greatly” from not doing enough.

The Nordic country is under intense scrutiny as it continues to experiment with a laxer policy response to the virus despite an accelerating death toll. Restaurants, shopping centers and primary schools all remain open in Scandinavia’s biggest economy. “Some countries seem to think that we aren’t doing anything, but we’re doing a lot of things that suit Sweden,” Linde said.

President Trump’s comments have also drawn the ire of Sweden’s top epidemiologist. “If you compare the situation to New York, where I have a relative working, things here are working well,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with state broadcaster SVT. Meanwhile Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven has said he sees no reason to respond to Trump, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. “I have spoken lately to about 10 heads of state and I note that we are all following the same lead strategy,” Lofven said.

snip

The vast bulk of foreign reporting simply ASSUMES that if we were not in total lockdown then that instantly means we are going for herd immunity. That is a pure logical fallacy, one that goes by multiple names: the Either/Or Fallacy, also sometimes called the Black-and-White Fallacy, or the Excluded Middle, or a False Dilemma/False Dichotomy.

Finally, to reiterate, many of the stories I have seen pushed also erroneously try and paint a picture that there are no restrictions (or very little) in place at all (my 'Wild West' analogy above), and certainly do not do any sort of deep, nuanced dive into what actually happened, why it happened, and what's happening at present, here on the ground.

Also, contrary to a lot of disnfo that I see pushed (especially in the US news) our economy contacted far less than the EU overall (the EU contracted 40% more, and multiple nations contracted close to, or more than double ours), and we are on track to go back to positive growth by Q1 or Q2 2021. The vast majority of our contraction came from a drop in exports, mainly from the supply chain for raw materials freezing up, and also from external demand from other countries diminishing. We also were the close to the only EU nation that has positive growth in Q1 2020.



Coronavirus: Sweden's economy hit less hard by pandemic

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53664354

Sweden, which avoided a lockdown during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, saw its economy shrink 8.6% in the April-to-June period from the previous three months. The flash estimate from the Swedish statistics office indicated that the country had fared better than other EU nations which took stricter measures.

However, it was still the largest quarterly fall for at least 40 years. The European Union saw a contraction of 11.9% for the same period. Individual nations did even worse, with Spain seeing an 18.5% contraction, while the French and Italian economies shrank by 13.8% and 12.4% respectively.



Sweden has largely relied on voluntary social distancing guidelines since the start of the pandemic, including working from home where possible and avoiding public transport. Although businesses have largely continued to operate in Sweden, the country's economy is highly dependent on exports, which were hit by lack of demand from abroad.

The authorities here have always said the country's Covid-19 strategy wasn't designed to protect the economy. They have stressed that the aim was to introduce sustainable, long-term, measures. But the government did hope that keeping more of society open would help limit job losses and mitigate the effect on businesses.

snip

[Thekaspervote]

1. Geez...even Sweden's experts came out and said they should have managed it differently

[Celerity]

2. yes, in the elderly care homes and scattered site housing elderly care, which is where the vast bulk

of deaths occurred.

see this OP and my other replies (some of which I used in this OP) in it for a very detailed treatment of all that.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214002169

[progressive nobody]

3. We need a complete national lockdown for 6 to 8 weeks

Only way to get a handle on this.

[Celerity]

6. the huge problem is that the US has around 75 million plus who will never obey now

Many people are also unaware that Norway and Denmark, whilst they did both do hard national lockdowns (we did not), were (and are) exactly like Sweden insomuch as all 3 of our governments and controlling health authorities not only did not require masks, but actively told people (and still do) to not wear them.

We (Sweden) as I have stated so many times before, fucked up horridly with our elderly care homes and assisted living scattered site housing, and then we were also impacted by our vastly higher number of immigrant and refugee populations, as they were impacted far worse than the rest of the population due to socio-economic and cultural living (far more likely to live all in one big extended family and to not socially distance) differences. If you subtract out those two groups, our death rate would be the same or lower than Denmark. even with them included, our under 40yo death rate here is almost non-existent (27 total out of over 5 million people, and none of those 27 were schoolchildren, even though we kept the schools open.

The cultural difference between Sweden (and obviously the rest of the Nordics) and the US is that we here have extremely few MAGAt virus deniers who go out of their way to break social distancing by the millions, and do it ON PURPOSE. Swedes naturally social distance as it is, and we also tend to live alone in far higher rates than most all other nations.


lol

[flamingdem]

4. We don't have health care!

Just health insurance for those who can afford it.

Hmm. What could go wrong?

[Celerity]

10. you are speaking to the choir on the systemic state of healthcare in the US

[DeminPennswoods]

5. Thanks for the info

TBH, I think there is a great deal of cherry-picking statistics to make whatever point is desired. I've noticed when infections are a low numeric number, I will hear about the high % increase instead, for example.

[Celerity]

8. I know it is asking a bit much, but I am just so sick of us being treated like a political football

the fucking RWers in the US praised us ONLY when it fit their agenda, then Trump turns around and bashes us a week later. Then you have the US MSM pick up the ball, and because the RW scum briefly pushed us (now they apparently are again so back in the barrel we go), they (the MSM) assumed the opposite posture and started making bullshit statements and continued on to flat out lies. It is crazy how one statement, that did not even say what was claimed, got spun up globally into 'oh those crazy Swedes and their herd immunity plans!'.

Both sides of the US (and elsewhere, especially in some EU nations who have axes to grind over other issues) political divide thus get gaslit. The same thing happened with our economic forecasts. The agenda-driven forces stated making shit up before the numbers even came out, and then when the actual numbers came out and showed their smears to be utter crap, they still never retracted. Now both false meta-narratives are baked into the cake. I thought the herd immunity big lie was dead, but nope, fucking Trump and his deranged death cult now have drug us back into the target zone, all in a misguided effort to use us as ammo against the MAGAts. My personal Skype group for my post grad uni group (along with some of my closest friends who are politically active, including some Americans) lit up the last several days. The US mainstream media (and not Fox, not OANN ratfuckers but still national in import) is becoming hated by most of them (and these are so NOT 'my nation, my Sweden, right or wrong' types at all.)

[Blue_true]

7. So reporters went around and only took photos is Swedes crowding bars

and restaurant patios and left out the ones where they social distanced? What about the email where Tegnell discusses the concept of herd immunity with a retired Epidemiologist?

I believe that it would be a disaster for us to try what Sweden is doing, our population is a lot, lot fatter and less healthy in almost all areas except maybe alcohol related health issues. We recently had a 25 year old man who got infected a second time, with the second infection being worse than the first - that was over four months, so it looks like herd immunity with SARS-COV-2 may not be achievable, we are not immune to it’s cousins, common cold coronaviruses (or maybe we are in that after millions of years, they have mutated to no longer kill us). Also, there are increasing numbers of people showing “long haul” symptoms, with it not being known whether they are permanent.

I prefer that we pursue a strategy based upon mask wearing and changes to indoor ventilation, along with plexiglass partitions and frequent deep cleaning. I believe those things will allow us to open the economy and not kill a lot of people as we move toward a vaccine or cure.

[Celerity]

9. chalk and cheese

I am only speaking to the lie that we were pursuing a herd immunity strategy, and also that our economy is as worse or worse than most all of the rest of the EU, which is just rubbish.

[Blue_true]

11. I read an article that said that Sweden hadn't escaped a downturn with it's strategy.

On a base level, that is true. With the herd immunity claim, officials in your country didn’t appear to knock that claim down as soon as it arose, so they are partly to blame. The rightwing here is really pushing the herd immunity possibility, so maybe that was what Chris Hayes was trying to knock down when he offended you with the points that he made about Sweden.

Like was pointed out in your OP, it is too early to say which strategy will produce the best result in the end. I noticed that Sweden has joined an EU vaccine effort, which was the right thing to do.

I believe that China is the model country. They got hit hard, but by using masks, social distancing and aggressive contact tracing, they now have their country open and are growing.

[Celerity]

12. those articles saying we were absolutely fucked economically were written well before the actual

numbers came out (and then not only never corrected but continued to be spread like assholes like Hayes.) Hayes has been the number one driver of this rot for months on MSNBC, who, to give it (the network) SOME credit, did have some of our officials on a couple times and let them correct the record, although that was ages ago and now is lost in the storm of bullshit yet again.

Our government and heath authorities have said from day one we were not pursuing a herd immunity strategy, But the big lie is still being spread by Hayes and a multiplicity of other agenda-driven outlets that simply want to use us to score points. We are a small nation, the foreign press is not waiting with baited breath on every utterance from our leaders. They only cherry-pick out dross and then bend and twist it.

I am NOT saying we did the best job, not at all. We fucking bollocksed it up badly at key vector points. Look at my OP's I have posted for months. I rip the handing of the elderly homes and off-site care here, it is unconscionable, and it exposed major systemic weakness in our system.

I also am not saying at all that the US should emulate Sweden, As I stated above, the US has a 75 to 100 million strong RW death cult inside it, and they will fuck up any type of Swedish voluntary social distancing, safety first, etc, model.

[Celerity]

13. add Lawrence O'Donnell to the gaslight bus now too

smdh

it is like clockwork

wanna have a go at the monster Trump (which IS the correct thing to do, just not the way they are doing so)

trot out Sweden, make up some bullshit, and away we go


added bonus, they made up more bullshit that we never shut down, in any way, restos, clubs, bars, and large events, which is just another lie

here is a flyer from online clubbing event from March (because all the main clubs were closed)



I actually posted this event and streamed it on DU

also, if they are that concerned about us

why don't they at least show that our deaths have just staggeringly dropped (to the point we have not had a single death, nationwide, from COVID-19 for 7 days now), and that is with no change in health practices

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa/page/page_0/

hell the last time we had over 20 death in a day was in June


I am not doing this for any reason other than I want you to know you are being lied to, right out in the open, and on a network that is supposed to be an ally (at least to a degree)

it may be for a good cause, but it is still lying, and that is NOT cool

[FreeState]

14. Sweden's GDP slumped more sharply than Finland, Norway, Denmark

Makes more sense to compare Sweden to Scandinavian countries than Spain, France or Italy.

Sweden's official statistics agency said that Sweden's GDP fell by 8.6% in Q2.

In comparison, Finland's statistics body said that its Q2 GDP was down 3.2%, and Denmark's said GDP there was down 7.4%.

Norway's GDPalso appears to have fallen less than Sweden's, though its measurements are out of sync with other nations. Its GDP fell 7.1% from March to May, a timeframe one month earlier

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1002&pid=14004074

[Celerity]

15. that was not the narrative being pushed, it was that we were either the same as the EU average

or, even more down the bullshit road, the worst or near worst in the EU. I saw it yammered on about for weeks on the US MSM telly networks, before the numbers even came out. Then when the numbers showed differently, they almost never retracted and now, once gain are pushing the tosh.

We are the most export-driven economy (and by far the largest overall) of the Nordics, and were hit with multiple exogenous shocks, from the global supply chain drying up, to demand for our exports falling rapidly. Those had little to nothing to do with our internal course of actions.

Norway is unique, as they are vastly more petrol driven, and their cost of production for North Sea crude is literally half of the UK's, so they can survive 30, 35 USD per barrel Brent crude prices, whereas the UK is fucked at that level.

Whilst we saw a historic economic contraction in the second quarter, the 8.6 percent decline was less than half that of the United Kingdom (-19.1 percent) and Spain (-18.5).

Finally, we also have suffered fewer COVID-19 deaths per capita than Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK, even though all had strict government lockdowns (the UK, granted, did a truly half-arsed job on that, I fully admit that, fuck Boris Johnson.)





and Q1, which is deffo part of the holistic picture





This entire narrative about Sweden, no matter what the subject, is along the same spirit and lines of the jackasses who said by May our entire medical infrastructure would collapse and we would have as high as 96,000 (81,600 if we did exactly what we did do) dead from COVID by July 1st!. That study was ramrodded all over the US MSM as well, treated like bloody gospel.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf

[FreeState]

16. No but it's what you posted

It still doesn’t make sense to me to try and shift the incorrect talking points going around with what I see as a faulty comparison.

Norway has a larger GDP per capita than Sweden.

2018
Norway 434.2 billion US (population 5.4 mil)
Sweden 556.1 billion US (Population 10.3 mil)

I imagine that the reason Norway had a bigger dip than the Finland and Denmark was the hit on petroleum. Even with lower cost of production demand sank everywhere. After all there isn’t a big demand for geit ost and russelåter outside of the region (although if Soppgirobygget came out with an English album they could change that )

Otherwise I agree with you the media narrative is completely false.

[Celerity]

17. oh, yes, per capita Norway blows us all away in GDP, and they are a huge problem

for our healthcare system here, as their wages are so much higher (so is the cost of living, but nowhere near enough to offset the increased wages) that they pull so many of our doctors nurses and highly skilled med workers over to there.

It is quite a strange meta-change when viewed though a long-wave historical lens of the past 600 years. They were part of either Sweden or Denmark for over 500 years until they peaceful broke the union with us in 1905. Without their petrol wealth (which is truly staggering) that is very new in the long sweep of time, they would still be the poorest of the 3 Nordic historical crown nations. As I have said else, I wish we could have realised the Nordic Superstate idea that arose post WWII (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, the Faeroe Islands, the Åland Islands, Finland, Svalbard, and Estonia) but alas, that is probably never going to happen, due mainly to the others having massive issues with our immigration policies of the past 25 or so years, plus Norway not wanting to share the petrol wealth they now have.

The linguistic differences would not be much of a long term issue, as Finns speak Swedish often as a second language, and Estonia (they speak a very close linguistic cousin of Finnish) and Iceland are so small they could be brought into the fold with not too much fuss. English is also very, very widely spoken in all of the lands as well. Denmark would also present issues, as they are by far the most nationalistic (and also the most hostile to our immigration policies) of all, with Sweden being the least nationalistic. Finland is up there as well (in terms of nationalism), and they do have some old deep-rooted cultural resentments from us ruling them as well (we treated them better than the Russians!), but I think those could be overcome, as so many Finns have come to Sweden anyway in the past.

Oh, well, a nice dream, but a dream it shall remain.