> Isn’t the real question why other countries aren’t doing the same?
Perhaps because they are not willing to take a gamble? This is, to put it bluntly, idiotic - you do not play games with people's lives and hope it turns out well.
Perhaps because they are not willing to take a gamble? This is, to put it bluntly, idiotic - you do not play games with people's lives and hope it turns out well.
I think his point is worth looking into. Most people are loosing money, which has a direct impact on health. And I for one had my Dr. Appointments canceled which were for testing. But the delay of those tests can potentially have lasting consequences.
Point is that it is important to analyze both the immediate and long term costs in any strategy fairly. But instead of that, the entire world went with lockdown with very little data to back it up, primarily based on the idea of flattening a curve in order to not overwhelm the health care system.
During the Great Depression, death rates went down, so it doesn't seem very substantiated to claim that lockdowns are going to kill people.
I sincerely believe that the Public Health Agency in Sweden are handling the situation in a good way. Will we fare better or worse than other, similar countries? We can’t know for sure, it’s only after it’s over that we can get a verdict.
That is the whole point - they're taking a gamble. You can draw up a matrix. If they don't do a lockdown, and it turns out to be not-very-dangerous, they will have saved the economy.
If they don't do a lockdown, and it turns out to be very dangerous, they will have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands. But the worst consequence that they can suffer is not getting re-elected.
Think of it like Russian roulette. If the payouts are [+10, +10, +10, +10, +10, -1000], your expected value is -158.3, but if your downside is limited to -20, your expected value is +5. It is not morally justified to take a 20% chance of killing 100'000 people for an 80% chance of raising GDP by 5% ($26 billion). That's 20'000 people for $21.2 billion, or $1.1 million per person.
The OP, dated Apr 4th, sounds like it is from 3 months ago. We learned a lot more since then about how reasonable people are in their behaviors and how inclined they are to understand sensible explanations.