The amount of denial in Sweden is staggering:
Unlike its European neighbors, Swedish officials did not institute lock down measures to combat the Covid-19 epidemic. CNN's Phil Black takes a look at how that has affected the country's outbreak.
www.cnn.com
They didn't do a mandatory lockdown. All of the neighboring countries have total death counts of less than 500, whereas Sweden has nearly 5 times that amount: (note that Denmark, Norway, and Finland all have a population of about 5 million, whereas Sweden has abotu 10 million, but even at double, that would be 1,000 people, not nearly 2,500 lost to COVID-19)
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But, this is where I have to take off my knee-jerk reaction hat of "lock down everything!" because there
is some merit to this approach:
1. We can't effectively keep the economy locked down forever because of money, food, supplies, etc.
2. Particularly because the virus is primarily targeting the elderly, which means we may be able to quarantine the high-risk population at home & not
everyone
3. Which means a phased approach may not be a horrible idea
4. Especially because experts say we're in this for the long haul (2020 is the ballpark right now)
5. And also because the experts say we're in for a second wave, which means maybe do a phased rollout back to work for a season & then go back to stay-at-home procedures during a second bad season
I feel like our response should be monolithic (there's a "but" coming in a minute). It worked for New Zealand...they became COVID-free this week & 400k people went back to work:
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced this week that the country has eliminated the novel coronavirus, but warned that residents must stay vigilant. Neighboring Australia has also experienced relatively high success in battling COVID-19. Nick Schifrin reports on how the Pacific...
www.pbs.org
Their population is roughly 5 million people; they had about 1,500 confirmed cases & 19 deaths total:
The country has stopped community transmission of Covid-19, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.
www.bbc.com
Contrast that with NYC, which has a population of over 8 million, but has 300,000 confirmed cases and 18,000 deaths. Gross warning, they just found almost 60 bodies piled into trucks at a funeral home. The reason it got reported was because fluids were dripping from the trucks, and one truck was refrigerated. So again, to compare: the entire country of New Zealand had 19 deaths total, whereas this one single funeral home in NYC has triple the amount of bodies sitting outside because they have no other place to store them:
Officials were back at a Brooklyn funeral home Thursday, removing bodies that weren't properly cared for inside the home, a law enforcement official tells CNN.
www.cnn.com
But...we also have to be realistic, which almost always means breaking things down into chunks & examining ways to do good or to do better instead of just doing "the best". I don't know what the right answer is & I sure am glad I'm not a politician having to make these kind of live-or-die situations. One of the most difficult things in calling the shots on this pandemic is that we simply don't know when it will end. If we knew, for sure, that it would go away by say August, then sure - lock it all down. But going into 2022, by some estimations, I mean...how is that sustainable?
I think the next few months are going to be where we have to forge a new path forward & define what life looks like in the near-term with this virus, let alone the long-term impacts across the globe. We'll get through this, like we always do, the question right now is simply when will things get back to normal? As normal as they can be post-virus & with such an economic impact, that is.
www.mytimminsnow.com
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