If Sweden succeeds, lockdowns will all have been for nothing

When foreign commentators discuss Sweden’s light-touch response to Covid-19, they tend to adopt an affronted tone. Which is, on the surface, surprising. You’d think everyone would be willing the Nordic country to succeed. After all, if Sweden can come through the epidemic without leaving a smoking crater where its economy used to be, there is hope for the rest of the world. So far, many signs appear encouraging. The disease seems to be following the same basic trajectory in Sweden as elsewhere.

Although we must wait for complete data, modelling by country’s authorities suggests that the infection rate in Stockholm peaked on 8 April. If so, we need to consider the implication, namely that, once basic hygiene and distancing measures are in place, tightening the screw further perhaps makes little difference. Which would be good news for the rest of us. Adopting Sweden’s more laissez-faire response might not restore our economies to full health, but it would at least allow us to bring them out of their induced comas.

Sweden is, broadly speaking, sticking to the approach that Britain followed in the week before the lockdown – the approach, indeed, that our strategists had wargamed in cooler-headed times. On 23 March, in an abrupt shift, Britain’s shops were closed and its people told to stay at home.

What had changed? Was it the hysterical media demand for a Continental-style crackdown? Or the furious reaction to people visiting beauty spots on Mothering Sunday? Or was it the Imperial College model, published a few days earlier, which warned of hundreds of thousands of deaths unless there was a mass quarantine? Whatever the explanation, the lockdown soon took on a momentum of its own, with every new death turned into an argument for tighter restrictions.

It is important to stress that Sweden is not being insouciant. Its people have been told to work from home if they can and to avoid unnecessary contact. Sports fixtures and meetings of more than 50 people are banned. Cafés can serve customers at tables, but not at the bar. Many Swedes, especially the elderly, are isolating themselves by choice. Personal spending, measured by bank card transactions, is down 30 per cent – though, by comparison, the fall in Norway is 66 per cent and in Finland 70 per cent.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2VCpEyP