Are any other countries dealing with this bullshit or is this strictly an American thing?

[Celerity]

17. we (Sweden) did NOT go for a "fuck it, we'll just let people die" approach

I disagree with what we are attempting to do, but that is a vastly inaccurate statement.

What they are trying to do is thread the needle and get to herd immunity (or hold it on a slow burn until a vaccine comes) without blowing out the healthcare system and also not completely blowing out the economy, both of which they are succeeding at so far.

They are banking on a couple of big things.

1. Keep all or almost all of schools under high school level open, to aid in the reaching of herd immunity. The 17 and under death rate is almost non existent here and elsewhere. The schools are a large driver driver and natural source of herd immunity for multiple 'normal' diseases each year in all nations.

Look at NYC, to see how low the lethality rate is for 17yo's and under:



The theory goes that you allow the schoolchildren to become superspreaders AND, at the same time you sequester the 10 to 20% of the high-risk population, so that you reach herd immunity FAR faster (and thus have no 2nd, even 3rd waves) than nations who go for a total shutdown, and thus almost guarantee 2nd and 3rd waves, plus destroy their economies to a far greater degree.

2. The government here has shut down all groups over 50 and there are a LOT of other restrictions as well. The government is banking on the population acting in a responsible way, which is problematic and depends what one labels as 'responsible'.

As for it being a 'disaster' that remains to be seen.

Compare Sweden to Belgium (a nation that did go, fairly early, to a full lockdown)

The other Nordic nations have lower death rates per 1 million than Sweden, but there are issues with how they are reporting deaths as well. (We need a GLOBAL standard ASAP.) There sia lot of sniping back and forth between the Swedish health officials and those in Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

We have roughly the same populations, and we are both being very open with the transparency in terms of stats. It also is difficult to look at the day-over-day Swedish deaths, as they are not (data-wise) evenly distributed by a straight 24 hour period. At the national briefing today, they said the average death rate is around 45 per day when you count up the exact death in a given 24-hour period and average out those figures.

Sweden also, now, finally is going to go to a massive testing level, something that Belgium is also doing.

Sweden has 10.1 million, Belgium has 11.6 million

Sweden's deaths are massively concentrated into 2 areas, (1) the extremely elderly, who are very concentrated into elder care (nursing) homes, and then (2) the large immigrant/refugee areas, who are not practising the same lifestyle changes that the other areas are (and Sweden has a vastly higher amount of immigrants/refugees than the other Nordic nations do, which explains PARTIALLY our higher rates. That is an extraordinarily sensitive subject here, especially when we are compared to the other Nordics, who have looked on with horror (especially Denmark and then Norway to a wee bit lesser extent) for years at what Sweden did in terms of immigration/refugee intake.)

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/belgium/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/







here are the nations listed in terms of deaths per 1 million in population




Will we ultimately succeed? That, my friend is the brillion kronor question. I hope for the nation's sake they do.