Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "UnHerd"
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brian elliot I can give you a quick birds-eye view of how Sweden has set things up. We have small families, typically one or two descendants per generation. Almost no stay-at-home wives, except for a fairly generous paid maternity/paternity leave that can extend to 1.5 - 2 years per child. But the women work after that, with few exceptions, and the system is set up for that, tax-wise and more. So almost all kids enroll in kindergarten.
If you become disabled while not at retirement age, which was the case with my father who died from MS about two years ago, a spouse or other relative can be employed essentially by the government to care for them and you can also pull in more salaried assistance if one assistant is not enough (which was the case with my father). It's a very costly system and there is some significant amount of organized cheating plaguing it, but we generally find it worth it.
Now, the elderly in Sweden are very many, and they may not have many descendants to help them, if any. We have a system where you can apply for assistance in your home, and the government will supply such assistance through visiting care givers. However at some point, when the care needs are too big, you can come to an elderly care facility instead.
So, we've to some large extent professionalized care. It's ok to object to that, I guess, but one thing that can be noted is that oftentimes, there really is no alternative, since loved ones might truly not have the resources to do it. E.g. if you suddenly pass, it sounds like your wife won't be able to care for your son, and vice versa. Perhaps you have other resources within your larger family, but that's not the case for everybody. Another thing that might explain why we've set it up like this in Sweden, can be seen in the Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map, where Sweden is ranked highest in self-expression values (vs survival values) and highest in rational-secular values (vs traditional values). So to a large extent we value autonomy and rational action. Also, with these Swedish values, it's typically the case that you truly don't want to be a burden to your loved ones, especially not beyond your spouse and parents.
Now, regarding the "Tegnell model" and Dr Mengele, I don't know what part of the setup you refer to, but I can note a few things. One is that the system overall, with elderly care facilities and such, is not his. Another is that he's the front-man of a large teamwork effort at the health authority, where they try to recommend policies that optimize health across the entire population. As such it's important that kids continue schooling, that exercise can be maintained, that people's lives aren't disrupted to an extent that they will be vulnerable to psychological illness, suicide and so on. This team at the health authority are not politicians, so they will not be as prone to focus on the big thing of the day and use the largest hammer in the toolbox in order to look good and win reelection. They'll think clearly and be careful to not suboptimize by focusing only on covid-19, and they will do as little as possible, always evidence-based, while still being effective.
A legal lockdown might have prolonged the lives of a thousand elderly by, say, 3 years, and that's being quite optimistic about the effects. So that's 3000 man-years saved. The lockdown however would have locked up 10 million people for say 6 weeks. That's 60 million weeks, or more than a million man years. So how do you compare these 3000 man-years saved, for a demographic that might not remember yesterday, with the million man-years lost in the lockdown? That's not a given, to me. Sure, the lockdown time might not be as bad as the nothingness of death, but for some in abusive families it will be, and there will be physical and psychological issues to contend with for many more.
Anyway, the policies we have have been effective from a birds-eye perspective. The recommendations of Tegnell's team caused a peak in virus transmission after which it fairly rapidly subsided and now we have almost no serious cases. He's kindof popular here, we like the strategy, and you invoking Dr Mengele frankly is nothing but judgmental (of Sweden as a whole, I'd say) even if you do not wish to be. But feel free to specify more clearly what you object to, and perhaps I can comment further.
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@RGBEAT Sweden's social distancing recommendations created a peak in transmission and a steady reduction in cases. A lockdown would have created the same thing, but probably a faster reduction in cases from an equally high peak. Thus a lockdown at the same time as the social distancing recommendations (and at the same time as lockdowns in other Nordic contries) would probably have saved 500-1000 lives of the 5000-6000 total deaths. Many people would instinctively say "well, a 1000 lives is a lot, then you should have done that", but I would disagree. The thing is, under ordinary circumstances, March and June can differ by as much as 3000 deaths in Sweden, and most of that is due to old and very frail people succumbing from flu, colds, winter vomiting and other things that always circulate more at the end of the winter season. And we don't institute lockdowns in Jan-Feb to give these people a few more months to live. A lockdown of 6 weeks would rob the population of 60 million weeks, or more than a million man-years.
That is not to say we couldn't have done things better. E.g. probably a tough recommendation on home quarantine for international travellers returning to Sweden already from early February would have helped. But there was no awareness how seeded Europe really was at that time. We knew about Italy and that awareness helped us fight back transmission originating from there (DNA based tracing has proved this).
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@samdavid6255 It's not NYC, it's New York state that has 28,000 deaths, and New York state has a population of 20 million. But I still agree, 0.1% is obviously too low.
It seems Guayaquil, Ecuador, has had an excess mortality of 9000 of a population of 3 million, so that's 0.3% population-based deaths. And they have about half the proportion of 65+ aged people, so transferred to US demographics that'd be 0.6% deaths. OTOH, Ecuador has worse health care, obviously, so the US could save more lives, probably.
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@rachanaraizada so, what you're saying is that Sweden has long term diplomatic credibility in both North Korea and Afghanistan, and sometimes joins peacekeeping or stabilization missions abroad? Well, I guess that's bad somehow. I also hear that you would have wanted Ghadaffi to crush the rebellion and remain in power. That's an opinion too.
There was no "conceptualisation of the Middle Eastern oil wars". There was a rather inept GWB whose hand was forced regarding Afghanistan by UbL, and who wanted to create glory for himself by liberating Iraq. I'd not be surprised if the US stocks invasion plans of most countries to have in case they're needed, just as the Soviet Union stocked detailed plans on an invasion of Sweden including the offensive use of tactical nuclear weapons. (Russia obviously still has similar plans, but hopefully won't feel a need to use them.) But whatever plans the US had, it wouldn't be in Afghanistan without 9-11.
You talk about "symptoms rather than the cause". It's interesting that the answer is always Western imperialism (or worse, whiteness). Nobody else seems to be expected to be a rational actor, and nobody else is held accountable. Funny thing, that.
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