The 'Swedish Model' Is a Failure, Not a Panacea

[SunSeeker]

5. We should do what South Korea did, not what Sweden did.

South Korea was able to avoid both a shut down and a high death toll. South Korea had their first confirmed case the same day we did. January 20. But they immediately started mass producing tests, and mobilized a national testing program by early February. Their early mass testing and contact tracing avoided the need for any lockdowns. They were able to quarantine just the infected. Their restaurants and factories stayed open. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/26/821688981/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down South Korea has lost only 262 people. That's a death rate of just 5.1 per 1 Million population. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/ 

Our population is 6.5 times South Korea's, so if we had done what South Korea did, our death total today would be 6.5×262=1,703, instead of 90,000. And our economy would not be in tatters.

But, alas, that would require a competent president, and we don't have that in one Donald J. Trump.

Trump wasted two months, January and February, downplaying Covid-19, instead of doing mass testing like the South Koreans He was given 2 months to catch up by our lockdown to ramp up testing in March and April. But he utterly failed and continues to fail. Trump refuses to invoke the DPA to mass produce tests like the South Koreans did. And without massive amounts of testing, we cannot do contact tracing and targeted quarantines. We don't even have a national plan to do that. We're pitiful. So we will and do have the worst of both worlds: a high death toll and a ruined economy.