Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)
Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 7:26 am
What we all need right now is some Kenneth Copeland. Can somebody fucking kill this guy please
Not sure we're going down the wrong path, time will tell, but here's an attempt to explain why we're the odd one out.5thhorseman wrote: ↑Thu Mar 26, 2020 7:43 am Looks like Sweden is also going down the wrong path and is headed for disaster. What the hell, Per! I thought you were better than this!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -pint.html
While most of Europe is firmly locked down in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19, Sweden is taking a softer line, keeping primary schools, restaurants and bars open and even encouraging people to go outside for a nip of air.
In contrast, neighbouring Norway two weeks ago rolled out the 'most intrusive measures' seen in peacetime, including banning sports and cultural events, and shutting down schools and businesses.
1) Since the 17th century Sweden has a tradition of letting government agencies or authorities run things. A "leave it to the experts" approach. The politicians make decisions on the direction they want to go, and set the budget, but the responsible agency has fairly free hands in implementation. This also means that Swedish government agencies are largely apolitical, people are hired for their expertise, not their political affiliation, and there is no change in personnel following an election. Having a member of government interfer in the workings of an agency is frowned upon.
Thus while most of our European neighbours have their elected politicians pass all sorts of legislation and emergency measures, often in an attempt to show strong leadership, the Swedish government has mainly focussed on passing different economic relief packages, while the fight against Corona is handled by the Public Health Agency. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the ... /covid-19/
Now, this means that the people in charge are a bunch of epidemologists with fancy degrees, and they're not very concerned with appearances. Thus they don't feel that they must make any grand gestures to show that they are in control. They also point out that the Spanish flu circulated for two years before being under control. A complete shutdown of society for two years is not feasible and would lead to an unparallelled economic and societal disaster. Thus their aim has been to flatten the curve as much as possible while disrupting society as little as possible.
They say that it could become necessary to impose bans at some point, but if you consider the possible two year scenario, they think this may be far too early.
What they have done is basically ban all gatherings of more than 500 people, ban buffets, have all high schools, colleges and universities switch to on-line education and encouraging people to work from home if possible, avoid all travel and practice social distancing. They have also told people 70 and older, as well as people with immuno-deficiencies, to self isolate, have others shop for them etc, and they have shut down access to all homes for the elderly. My wife is not allowed to visit her mother at present.
They are counting on Swedes to follow recommendations and do the sensible thing, without imposing any bans. They are trying to isolate the most vulnarable for the time being and hoping that the curve will flatten enough so that we can get past the peak without too many casualties.
2) We Swedes are a bit peculiar. If you take a look at the graph presented by the World Values Survey, you'll notice that we are the most extreme nation when it comes to Self Expression as opposed to Survival Values, (the other Scandinavian countries and Canada being the closest to us) and second only to Japan when it comes to Secular-Rational Values as opposed to Traditional Values. We're up in one extreme corner.
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, we don't like authoritarianism. We're not impressed by strongmen. We do not like people to just tell us what to do, without explaining the rational behind it. And even then we'd like to discuss it before we agree to. But on the other hand (just like Canadians) we tend to trust people. In the Swedish countryside people leave the doors unlocked. Thus the idea of not banning stuff, but having a bunch of scientists with fancy titles tell us what we should and should not do, and explain why, could be a useful strategy when herding Swedes.
This is not new. Back in the day, when smoking was still common, you would often see signs saying "rökning undanbedes", sort of "it'd be nice if you don't smoke" rather than the "no smoking", "smoking prohibited" or "smoking not allowed" signs seen in other countries. We were asked to not do something rather than being told to not do it. And this is how it often works here. I guess this is kind of a stereotypical Canadian trait, eh?
Many foreigners get confused by Swedish office meetings. We discuss something for quite a while, then leave the meeting without having taken a decision. Yet everyone knows what to do. It's how we roll.
So, basically, the government is letting the epidemiologists steer the ship, and they do it through friendly advice rather than legislation and bans.
Will it work? We'll see. Most people I know are working from home, if their line of work allows for that. The restaurants are empty, but people are encouraged to order take-out, to help them survive. The people in the stores are all wearing gloves.
More than 3000 identified cases at present, 92 dead and roughly 200 in intensive care.
Let's just keep our fingers crossed that the curve will stay flat.
