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Comment by etrevino | Hacker News Reader

I'm an American, so the usual caveats apply, but I think more should be made of this statement from the interview:

"The Swedish laws on communicable diseases are mostly based on voluntary measures — on individual responsibility. It clearly states that the citizen has the responsibility not to spread a disease. This is the core we started from, because there is not much legal possibility to close down cities in Sweden using the present laws. Quarantine can be contemplated for people or small areas, such as a school or a hotel. But [legally] we cannot lock down a geographical area."

If we take that as a given then the approach used in, say, Italy isn't doable. Why not put that out there and let there be a public debate about the issue? Is there a sense that this isn't the time?

Maybe there is a debate. I'm not exactly in touch with Swedish politics, so if someone knows, I'd love to hear about it.

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Isn't this whole process of debate and individual responsibility basically irrevocably tainted in the age of mass misinformation? I don't know where we get if we walk down this train of thought, probably nowhere good, but when a not inconsiderable portion of the population has been directly targeted to cause them to believe the whole thing is just Bill Gates fault, who magically caused the Coronavirus and is holding back a cure, does debate have value?

This might be a good time when a representative democracy, composed of people who are willing to listen to experts and make the hard, unpopular, decisions, would be the best choice.

> Isn't this whole process of debate and individual responsibility basically irrevocably tainted in the age of mass misinformation?

maybe so, but if you assume this to be true, it's guaranteed.

You right, that may be too far. But I don't know if we assume that direct democracy works well in the face of extremely important, time critical, issues requiring a lot of specialized information. I still have faith in democracy finding decent leaders, but I don't know if the populace has the required ability to consider all the nuance of this pandemic we're facing and then making an educated, forward thinking, and in all probability incredibly painful decision. It's been clear from a lot of the arguments I've heard people neither have a good grasp on exponential growth and it's consequences in terms of containment, nor on the timeline or steps required to get this all under control.

to be clear, I don't think america should have a national vote on quarantine or just let people do whatever they want. the current situation has degraded too far for that.

what I refuse to accept is that the notion of individual responsibility and reasoned debate is over forever. maybe this is naive, but I do believe that it's more effective to convince people they should work towards a goal than to impose rules by force. I will concede that the US is missing many of the prerequisites to make this realistic. people not being able to reason about exponential growth is a failure of the education system, not an intrinsic limitation of the human mind. people distrust information/directions from the government because it has repeatedly shown itself to be untrustworthy. people are unwilling to sacrifice months of income because they were barely getting by before.

> people not being able to reason about exponential growth is a failure of the education system

I think it is a cultural failure, not an educational failure. Education is available, but people, both children and adults, make excuses like "when will I ever need mathematics in real life?"... [Answer: when your life depends on it]

There is, or has been, a general lack of respect and inherent laziness toward intellectual pursuits. This is especially apparent when viewing the antagonism between science and politics.

The supposed "age of mass misinformation" isn't as big of a problem in Sweden as it is in the US.

For one, test scores and reading levels indicate the average Swede is far better educated than the average American.

Second, Sweden's media industry doesn't have competing private 24 hour cable news conglomerates fighting over eyeballs. In Europe, government financed media is more common, and thus there is not the same private incentives to drive fear and anger.

Does Sweden has issues with misinformation? Of course (mostly around fear of immigrants). But they don't have anywhere near the problem we have in the US with misinformation.

Misinformation is nothing new and just as the amount of misinformation has increased, the amount of information has increased too. I would bet that the average citizen is better informed overall today than say 50 years ago.

Possibly. But there's been a huge signal boost for the extreme views. 50 years ago you couldn't find out about the corona protests and half an hour later be reading website after website after website about how 5G causes a virus.

You couldn't read a website, so you'd go down to the cult's headquarters to learn about it in person. It was a huge social problem in the 70s!

Which, ironically, would have probably kept a large portion of the rural populace and the smaller urban centers without a HQ immune to it.

That's still a much larger barrier to entry though. Getting someone to click a link is much easier than getting them to visit you in person at a particular place and time.

The misinformed weren't winning elections 50 years ago.

Richard J. Hofstadter would like a word.

Citation needed.

Probably, but the core issue (at least in the US) is that a large fraction of informed citizens have moved to coastal cities, leaving the less informed citizens with more voting power. This means that misinformed citizens are gaining more influence over time, not less.

> but the core issue (at least in the US) is that a large fraction of informed citizens have moved to coastal cities, leaving the less informed citizens with more voting power

Every person imagines they are better informed than those they disagree with, especially when it comes to politics.

There are exceptions to this rule. For example, I am better informed than those who disagree with me.

> the core issue (at least in the US) is that a large fraction of informed citizens have moved to coastal cities

No, a large fraction of citizens who think they are better informed have moved to coastal cities. Most of them are mistaken. If they are so well informed, why are the coastal cities they live in the places with the highest per capita crime rates and the highest cost of living?

> This might be a good time when a representative democracy, composed of people who are willing to listen to experts and make the hard, unpopular, decisions, would be the best choice.

So basically, you want a return to some form of Aristocracy?

No. A representative democracy, like most nations whose citizens don't directly vote on everything have, have right now.

As opposed to the aristocracy we have now?

How many Senators and Congresspeople (and MPs in the UK) aren't multi-millionaires?

Your comment reminds me of the that Swedish "If crisis or war comes" pamphlet sent to all Swedish households in 2018. Right on the second page is a warning about "false information":

https://www.dinsakerhet.se/siteassets/dinsakerhet.se/broschy...

Maybe a "mental herd immunity" against viral propaganda is a necessary first step to develop a biological herd immunity ;)

Many would argue that the pamphlet is in itself untrustworthy state propaganda, so I can't even begin to guess at a good solution.

Well, surely it's not working at the present time. A politician interviewed who went out to get the virus and then attended meetings was completely unconcerned about spreading it to his peers.

Interviewer: "But can you understand his concern [about his risk due to his health conditions]?"

Persson: "No, I do not. He's 50 years old. There is no risk to him. He doesn't get sick of this."

Interviewer: "But do you know that even younger people get sick and die of corona?"

Persson: "There is no reason to be worried. It's a hysteria. It is the same as with the climate. It is not possible to change. We cannot influence it politically."

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/varmland/storforspolitiker...

And yet, somewhat bizarrely, Sweden has been latched onto as the model for a sane response to the virus amongst many conservative circles. I will hold my breath as they fail to take action against a disease with 10 times the IFR of the flu and many fold the transmissibility, with the CDC now reporting an r0 of 3.8–8.9 in a 95% CI.

That interviewed person is from a local party in a small municipality. Very fringe.

Of course the US right tries to score points from the lack of a hard lockdown here. But I wonder how well that would have worked without universal healthcare and salaries partly (80%?) paid by government for the time being.

The key bit is "not inconsiderable portion of the population".

That is a very human perception failure and one that all politics and tribal psychology use. "Others are more dangerous than they are because they are other.and we say they are" not because they have an actual threat.

The reality is that these are incredibly small numbers but the hype about them is real.

Based upon this survey, more than a quarter of people don't want the United States shut down. That's a considerable proportion. That's the amount of people who vote in a president.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/494028-poll-more-th...

We needn't go to the margins of Bill Gates somehow creating corona virus. Here's some of the blatant lies and misinformation that came straight out of the supposedly legitimate leadership.

* Masks don't work, and you're too stupid to wear one anyways (WHO and US Surgeon General)

* There is no human to human transmission (WHO)

* The fact that there is a biolab in the exact area where the virus started spreading from is just a wild coincidence you racist (media Cathedral)

I have a hard time blaming people for going down conspiracy theory rabbit holes about Gates when all the people who should be setting us straight have no credibility.

To be fair at least one of those three you posted is still a conspiracy theory, unless you have a source about the virus being man made - I don't think there's any evidence outside of coincidence.

I would highly recommend parsing the statements by Chinese media and WHO very carefully. They're using explicitly non-scientific squishy language to describe the whole thing. One example:

>All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing. “It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin.

What the heck does that mean, exactly? It sounds like MAYBE it suggests the virus' genome was not explicitly manipulated with CRISPR. Okay. Was the lab growing virus in human cadaver tissue? Was the lab putting selective pressure on the virus in bats? Was the lab even studying the virus which had been discovered totally as-is in the wild?

Make no mistake. There has been no blanket denial of the lab's involvement with the virus. Only carefully worded PR responses and calling you racist for asking questions.

You're still not providing evidence for. There is evidence against:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317175442.h...

You do understand that the scientific method is couched entirely in current best understanding, right? We assume the theory of gravity is how gravity works up and can assume it's probably true until a better theory comes up. You'll notice they didn't mention the animal - can we then safely assume it's a moose flu? That's even better supported as they did confirm in the affirmative it was an animal.

And the other lies you posted were said with 100% certainty - how is the use of probable more evidence of a lie?

I'm explicitly not making claims about the origin of the virus. The only "conspiracy" is that you're racist for demanding answers.

Neither of your articles provides a blanket denial that the lab was involved in research that included the virus. It only makes some very narrow denials in non-scientific language.

Well in that case that seems entirely philosophical, and entirely out of place with the other two claims, which can actually have results.

But you do seem to be arguing for the theory as well.

I ask you about A.

You respond with B, a tiny subset of A.

I ask you for the rest of A.

Rather than saying something even as innocuous as "I don't know" you call me a racist.

In the most technical sense you might not be lying about B. But you're definitely being dishonest with the presumptive accusation of racism. And you're definitely using deceptive language to avoid answering the question. And you've definitely destroyed your credibility on a scale equal to "Masks don't work."

When outlined like that, it's totally fair to doubt, assuming that's the only or primary defense. Do you have some links to mainstream media outlets directly correlating questioning origin as being racist?

On the contrary, this is exactly how scientific communication works. Nothing is in absolutes. If you want absolute language look to religion.

Nice trick to slip an actual conspiracy in with two things that are not.

Totalitarian China hasn't made any efforts to close its wet markets, which are the claimed source. They also have not blanketly denied the lab's involvement with the virus. They've only hinted in non-scientific language that they didn't directly manipulate the genome (with CRISPR or something).

The conspiracy is by the media Cathedral for suggesting racism is the source of the demand for answers. I have no idea where the virus came from. But we're definitely not getting accurate info in this area.

Not getting accurate info is no reason to spread inaccurate info.

I think I see our disconnect.

You are focused on people questioning the origin of the virus as a conspiracy. I'm focused on the lies/credibility of the people in charge.

It doesn't matter where the virus came from. The supposedly credible people haven't been answering honestly. First they gave very narrow responses, then they accused people of being racist for calling them out on the narrow, useless response.

You don't attribute any of those comments to the WHO trying to get a handle on an evolving situation, and instead to deliberate lies, even though they have changed their recommendations as time passed?

And you're grouping all these groups mistakes together when that's not really fair to the different groups.

https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...

The Surgeon General makes two claims in this single tweet. The first is that masks won't protect YOU from catching the virus. The second is that it will protect healthcare workers.

Reading that first claim as anything but a lie intended to manage your behavior is generous beyond credulity. He told you it was a lie in his second claim. He couldn't even separate these claims into two tweets, much less some period of time when new scientific information might have been discovered.

To be fair the way the average person wears a mask it won't protect them.

Literally anything that increases the friction between you and the virus protects you. Even a snorkel, with no filter at all, which forces the water droplets carrying virus to travel farther and around a few corners will likely provide you with some tiny bit of protection. It will do so because the extra turns increases the odds that the droplet will hit a surface or something and get stuck before entering your airway.

It's very reasonable to suggest that a trained professional with years of experience in dealing with contamination will have better results from PPE than an average person. But that's a wildly different claim than masks do not offer the general public any protection.

It takes very few viral particles to catch covid.

Any protection greater than zero is still some protection. Reducing odds of getting it by 0.01% is a huge number of people at scale when you're estimating over a million people dying and 100+ million getting it.

I agree. I wear a mask and wish others would.

I'm watching the coronavirus task force press release right now and the Surgeon General just doubled down and said masks don't protect you from getting the virus, and that medical professionals need them because it protects medical professionals. So he's still lying to you.

My belief is they are deliberately lying because they are managing you rather than informing you. The lie is to encourage compliance on turning over masks to the medical professionals. But even if I'm as generous as possible about their intent, it still has destroyed their credibility.

American public messaging is trying to draw a distinction between proper masks (surgical and N95, needed for medical professionals, no reason for you or I to get them) and coverings (just any piece of cloth in front of our face holes). It seems convoluted but I think it's no longer dishonest.

The part where they claim a proper mask, like N95, wouldn't provide you any protection is dishonest.

> Isn't this whole process of debate and individual responsibility basically irrevocably tainted in the age of mass misinformation?

Wasn't there an article here yesterday about the San Francisco anti-mask league [0] from 1918? I don't think misinformation and people acting incorrectly is something new.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...

Totally true. Really shows it's a longstanding flaw in the idea that we can use direct democracy for topics like this.

> Isn't this whole process of debate and individual responsibility basically irrevocably tainted in the age of mass misinformation?

The problem is not misinformation. The problem is whether a country is really willing to enforce a law that says every citizen has a positive responsibility to not infect others.

If you really enforce that law, then anyone who gets COVID-19 because they didn't take reasonable precautions, and then infects someone else, is legally liable for damages. They could be sued for all of the health care costs of anyone they infect. They could be sued for wrongful death if someone they infect dies. Depending on the circumstances and the details of the statute, they could be liable to criminal charges.

That's what "individual responsibility" means--holding individuals responsible, legally, when they harm others. And in a legal environment like that, misinformation isn't a problem, because people who act on misinformation end up harming others and being held responsible, and since nobody wants to be in that position, everyone learns, in their own self-interest, to not act on misinformation. Which in turn means that information sources that continually propagate misinformation die because nobody listens to them. And information sources that can reliably report accurate information thrive, and have an incentive to continue reporting accurate information.

> This might be a good time when a representative democracy, composed of people who are willing to listen to experts and make the hard, unpopular, decisions, would be the best choice.

Representative democracy will only be composed of such people if people have a strong incentive to act on accurate information and to not act on misinformation. Which, as you yourself point out, does not describe societies today.

>This might be a good time when a representative democracy, composed of people who are willing to listen to experts and make the hard, unpopular, decisions, would be the best choice.

There's always the next election. It's hard to do unpopular things if you don't expect them eventually to become popular. E.g. lockdowns may be unpopular now, but if crisis can be avoided, it wouldn't hurt your election results. There is an exception though; if countries like Sweden don't have strict measures and still thrive, a lot of people will see that as a failure of your government.

The statement omits the fact that mandatory measures can be imposed when it comes to diseases classified as dangerous for the public, which covid-19 is. So while it's the citizen's responsibility not to spread diseases, the law also provides for mandatory isolation of people who are unable or unwilling to follow precautions.

The outbreak has absolutely dominated the news and public discourse for nearly two months now. There's lots of coverage of Sweden's strategy, including opposition to it, and its coverage in foreign press. Politics has been likewise dominated by the government's response and he opposition's reaction to it. I really don't get the feeling that there's a lack of debate on anything covid-related, although the nature of the event means that the usual Swedish process of taking decisions by slowly building up to a consensus cannot apply.

This is helpful to know, thanks!

> The Swedish laws on communicable diseases are mostly based on voluntary measures — on individual responsibility.

I don't know much about Sweden, but this would have a hard time working in the US. There is a large percentage of the population that would do nothing because the government suggested it. I think it's pretty clear that many states are opening too fast too early, but instead there are protests about people wanting to be free.

> I think it's pretty clear that many states are opening too fast too early

Not at all.. I think it's clear we locked down way too fast (and I was supportive of the initial lockdowns). At the time, we thought that -- even with the lockdown -- we would overwhelm the hospital systems in many parts of the country. Guess what... that didn't really happen. We didn't run out of ventilators at all. That means we over reacted. Now it's time to lower the restrictions with the new constants in mind, so that any subsequent peak more completely uses excess capacity, and more people can get back to work.

I'm a little confused. You think because the system was not overwhelmed, the US locked down too early? The point of the lockdown was to prevent getting overwhelmed, which appears to have mostly worked.

I guess I'm having hard time understanding the logic where since the system wasn't overwhelmed with a lockdown in place, there was no need for a lockdown.

I agree the point of lockdown was to prevent getting overwhelmed and without it we would have had some regions with overwhelmed systems.

However, we more than met that. Not only were hospitals not overwhelmed, many hospitals had such little work that they ceased operations.

That means we clearly overreacted, at least in those areas. Now, it's time to loosen up, and let all those hospitals that literally had so few patients they were closing down to have a reason to exist.

For example, California locked down early -- good for them! But their ICUs were not anywhere near capacity. They've now had a month to expand capacity, which they've done. That means they can handle more sick people. California should think about opening up a little, and then, as some get sick with COVID and need ICU care, we can be assured there will be ICU space. We have better numbers now and can run a model that ensures ICUs run at or near capacity so that more people can be at work while everyone can be assured there is an ICU bed should they need it.

What I don't understand is your perspective. It is clear we had excess ICU capacity during the lockdown. Doesn't that mean we wasted resources in getting to herd immunity. The point of a lockdown is to 'flatten the curve', not make the virus go extinct (which is all but a pipe dream at this point). We cannot get herd immunity unless more people get it. The danger in letting everyone get it at once is that we run out of ICU beds. The danger in locking down too hard is that we have excess ICU beds that could have been used to get us to herd immunity faster. We had a lot of excess ICU beds in the country. That means we wasted time. That's okay -- we had information at the time we now know was not 100% correct. Let's adjust the models and continue on.

The balance, nuance, respect for law-- this is absent from the public discussion in the U.S.

That may be, but I'm wondering what the reasoning is in Sweden, not the US.

Swede here - I get the feeling we trust our citizen and government response enough to not generally call for a hard lockdown. Some wanted elementary schools closed. Almost nobody is happy about how the elderly care works - but almost everyone were unhappy about the elderly care in general even BEFORE this.

The government actually did give themself increased authority to enact short term measures as needed. Parliament only demanded that any such measures are passed through parliament for approval within two days of execution, and I think maximum extent of such measure are three months.

But wrt to debate I think the general sentiment is that current measures are working fine. People are getting a bit restless with the spring coming, but besides that most internal debates right now is why there is not more action taken against restaurant owners and such. The municipal authorities are allowed to close down any such business that don’t take suitable measures to limit infection. And a apparently there’s some places that people aren’t too happy with.

That quote stood out to me, too.

It's hard to lock down an area in the U.S., too, but some states and cities have enacted nonessential business, school, and transportation closures that have been quite effective at flattening the curve without a geographic quarantine.

Maybe another question to ask: Can Sweden enact emergency facility and public transportation closures for other reasons? For instance, for a flood or some other disaster?

> I'm an American, so the usual caveats apply

What do you mean with usual caveats?

Just that since I don't live there and know the society/culture I may be asking a dumb question. I probably should have said something like "I don't know much about Sweden, so I'm asking from a position of genuine ignorance."

Ah thanks, I assumed it was an HN inside joke and I was a bit lost

Cheers

Well, that's not an excuse, laws can and should change as needed.

There may be a constitutional or-- as it's often put in Europe-- a basic law issue. But, I'm wondering why it is that we haven't heard about a debate to change these laws.

The simplest reason is probably because that type of internal political debate is unlikely to be reported by foreign media, assuming you aren't consuming any Swedish news.

That's not to say that too much discussion of these types of laws have been brought up, but a law was recently (quarantine throws off my sense of time, but I think last week) passed which gave the government significantly more power in terms of ability to close down businesses, airports, harbors, and more without needing to seek parliamentary approval first. This was after a bit of debate regarding the unprecedented nature of such a law and some modifications which were mostly aimed at not giving the government too much power.

They might not even be changeable. For Germany for instance:

"Article 79 states the Basic Law may be amended by an absolute two-thirds majority of both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. Such a vote may not remove any of the principles underlying articles 1 and 20 as defined by the eternity clause, or remove or otherwise affect the essence of, any of the fundamental rights originally specified in articles 1 to 19; [32] but may clarify, extend or refine those original principles and fundamental rights. " (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repu...)

So any coronavirus-fighting law that could be seen as "removing" one of those fundamental rights simply could not be made. Making these laws hard to change is deliberate, as allowing for changes in "emergencies" allows potential dictators to use emergencies as an excuse for broadening their own power, as Hitler did (and Hungary is doing now, under pretense of fighting the virus).

The legal argument is weak, and the disingenuous way he discusses it makes me question the veracity of his other points. The national government could 'strongly suggest' a lockdown and most people would comply willingly.

The reason for not doing that has been stated time and again earlier - they worry about endurance. We will have to keep up with modified behaviour for a long time, and overdoing it may compromise endurance.

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