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I'd say that the fact that Sweden still had the same level of restrictions as they previously had is proof that their approach is working exactly as intended - the people behind it have long said that the goal isn't to push for herd immunity, but to impose measures that are sustainable in the long term rather than a short-term lockdown. Especially since many of the countries that have locked down and then opened up are seeing a resurgence of the disease, and their definition of opening up is sometimes as strict or stricter than Sweden's rules (for example, the UK bans gatherings of over 30 people and restricts restaurants and bars to table service only, amongst many other restrictions).

>Especially since many of the countries that have locked down and then opened up are seeing a resurgence of the disease

Isnt that the expected result? Did anyone think something else would happen? The original communication everyone was fed was "hospitals arent ready, close down to flatten the curve to buy time." They asked for a delay, not spread prevention. Spread prevention being, stay locked down forever until everybody gets its slowly.

Sweden made a contrarian bet: that hospitals won't be flooded, and a few less ambitious measures that people will tolerate for a longer time is better than a large list of freedom destroying measures that can only lead to riots if imposed for too long (depending on the countries, you had things like lockdown at home, with only shopping on some days depending on the last digit of your social security, or only going out for 1 hour per day with printed, signed and dated papers to present to the police, etc)

And that the country was happy with a much higher death rate. Sweden has less than half the population of Australia and they have had 5,667 deaths and Australia has had 128.

> And that the country was happy with a much higher death rate. Sweden has less than half the population of Australia and they have had 5,667 deaths and Australia has had 128.

When Australia went into the first lockdown they had essentially no community transmission.

It is unclear that the lockdowns had any impact at all.

Now that there is significant community transmission in Melbourne we can see if the second lockdown is effective.

Oz is probably the sparsest country in the world.

With the majority of the population living in cities on the coast. Sydney? Melbourne? Big, dense cities. We're not all out living in the bush shouting cooee at each other.

If you measure average population density across the entire country, sure, but the vast majority of the country is practically uninhabited.

Sydney and Melbourne are much like any other large city in the world and, at around five million people each, combined they represent ~40% of the country's population.

The early success Australia saw in dealing with this pandemic had nothing to do with sparse population.

I also think the bet depended on Sweden's culture of social responsibility.

Doing something similar in the US would never work. We don't have a culture of social responsibility. It's why draconian measures were required. Recommendations don't work and laws/ordnances only work to an extent. In essence, the US has such a self-centered culture that the only option to combat a pandemic like this is draconian lockdown that borders on infringing on individual rights.

> We don't have a culture of social responsibility. It's why draconian measures were required.

Sounds backwards to me. I'd bet a logical approach like Sweden's would have been much better tolerated and observed, especially in the long term. The current "new plan of the week" here in California is for the birds.

Not to mention that a significant portion of US deaths were a direct cause of NY forcing sick into nursing homes.

Colorado went a couple months recommending but not requiring face masks. The governor finally enacted a mandate because people weren't abiding by it.

And? I know many folks have been convinced that cloth-mask wearing is the primary factor in reducing transmission. But, deep down I think we all know that it's not that important compared to other things.

Also, folks do comply voluntarily when they see local stats and people around them getting sick. Yes, scolding when statistically no one in a rural state has it is not surprisingly effective in the short term.

What other things?

Any of the dozens of other guidelines that should be followed, minus the cloth mask. One not often mentioned but touched on here is getting outdoors in the sunshine.

Locally I often see folks hiking alone in the sun wearing cloth masks and it is clear they don't understand when they are actually useful or not. Anti folks don't appear to either.

> but deep down we all know...

From 18 July Wall Street Journal:

Face Masks Really Do Matter. The Scientific Evidence Is Growing.

New research suggests that face coverings help reduce the transmission of droplets, though some masks are more protective than others.[1]

Face masks are emerging as one of the most powerful weapons to fight the novel coronavirus, with growing evidence that facial coverings help prevent transmission—even if an infected wearer is in close contact with others.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he believes the pandemic could be brought under control over the next four to eight weeks if “we could get everybody to wear a mask right now.” His comments, made Tuesday with the Journal of the American Medical Association, followed an editorial[2] he and others wrote there emphasizing “ample evidence” of asymptomatic spread and highlighting new studies showing how masks help reduce transmission.

%< snip %<

Researchers say the benefits of widespread mask use were recently seen in a Missouri hair salon, where two stylists directly served 139 clients in May before testing positive for Covid-19. According to a recent report[3] published by the CDC, both wore either a double-layered cotton or surgical mask, and nearly all clients who were interviewed reported wearing masks the entire time.

After contact tracing and two weeks of follow-up, no Covid-19 symptoms were identified among the 139 clients or their secondary contacts, the report found. Of the 67 who were willing to be tested, all were negative for Covid-19.

%< snip %<

Wearing a mask is “one of the most urgent things we can do to get our country under control,” said Melanie Ott, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology. “We’re all waiting for the vaccine, we’re waiting for therapeutics, and we’re not there.”

“We have masks, we have social distancing, and we have testing,” she continued. “But there’s not much more in the toolbox here.”

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/face-masks-really-do-matter-the...

2. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768532

3. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm

  Conquer with Inaction

  Do not control the people with laws, 
  Nor violence nor espionage, 
  But conquer them with inaction. 
  For: 
  The more morals and taboos there are, 
  The more cruelty afflicts people; 
  The more guns and knives there are, 
  The more factions divide people; 
  The more arts and skills there are, 
  The more change obsoletes people; 
  The more laws and taxes there are, 
  The more theft corrupts people. 
  Yet take no action, and the people nurture eachother; 
  Make no laws, and the people deal fairly with eachother;
  Own no interest, and the people cooperate with eachother;
  Express no desire, and the people harmonize with eachother.
                -- Lao Tse, "Tao Te Ching"

I didn't realize there were guns in the 4th century BC.

It's also important to note that Lao Tse was trying to make sense of the collapse of his entire way of life during the Warring States period. He was trying to find an answer as to how the governments of the day failed so badly and descended into such chaos.

While it is true that community spirit can thrive under pressure, we should not be seeking to attain community spirit at the cost of overall quality of life. We should not allow COVID-19 to run rampant so that people learn the usefulness of masks. This falls into the same trap that Lao Tse fell into, thinking that the perceived causative opposite will result in the opposite outcome. If this were true, then the Sudan and Somalia would be the happiest places on Earth.

A 6th century BCE philosopher had an opinion on guns?

> (...) is better than a large list of freedom destroying measures that can only lead to riots if imposed for too long

Do you have any example of such a civilization-destroying reaction to basic public health measures?

I mean, Spain was locked down for a long time, and they did had armed forces personnel patrolling the streets, and Spain didn't descended into chaos although they still remember quite well what's it like to live in a dictatorship.

If you need the army patrolling the streets to enforce the rules, I think that riots are not too far away.

I also learned in this thread they happened in other countries like Serbia.

I would expect them to happen in more european countries if there is indeed a second wave, and they do not have the foresight to deploy soldiers in the streets.

It worked better than for Serbia, where people were recently rioting for being locked down again for a whole weekend.

I've seen different messaging spread around. With Australia, for example, I've heard people say they did a great job "squashing the virus", so I think there's definitely surprise from some people that cases are surging again.

For example, I found an article called "Coronavirus: Are Australia's numbers at risk of escalating?"[0] (to me, the headline itself seems a strange question to ask, since the answer is obviously 'yes').

From the article:

"Australia has reported just over 7,400 cases, far fewer than many nations. It has seen 102 deaths - the last was a month ago.

Since May, the country has entered a phased exit from lockdown restrictions as the curve flattened.

But in the last week there's been a rise in cases in Victoria, mostly in the state capital Melbourne.

Concern has crept back into public conversation: Is this a small setback, or could it be something more sustained?"

To me there seems to be a widespread misunderstanding, perhaps perpetuated by the media, that locking down the country would stop the spread of the virus entirely.

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53132585

Well, we didn't exactly lock it down properly ... In Melbourne the poorly trained security guards responsible for quarantining returning passengers in a hotel were having sex with the passengers.

It was also mentioned by the Victorian Premier yesterday that roughly 90% of people who felt sick were still out and about in the community and that roughly 50% of people who got tested for Covid were still active in the community before they got their results. Some of this would have been because they couldn't afford to miss work etc, but it's still disappointing.

Yes, but that changed very quickly to "lockdowns reduce total deaths" once it became clear that the predictions of hospital overload were wrong.

Now you have places like New Zealand that appear to be trying to keep themselves COVID-free forever, without any clearly articulated path out of the restrictions.

You do realize New Zealand at the moment is almost restriction free outside of external travel? At this point they have fewer restrictions than any major country in the world including Sweden.

Throttling all external travel is a severe and major restriction, especially for a country that derives significant revenue from tourism. It's not some minor thing that can be blown off. Travel to/from NZ will be minimal for as long as that continues, and they have no way out.

The UK is a bad example, cause they have been doing worse than Sweden in every regard. There are plenty of countries in Europe which have much more relaxed limits now, for example Germany, Switzerland or the Czech Republic. Probably the other Nordic countries too (I'm not entirely sure about the latest there though).

According to:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

Germany is currently socially distancing at a similar rate as Sweden.

They previously had stricter social distancing and have far fewer per-capita infections and deaths, but the model says they’ll hit a nasty second wave in mid October.

Time will tell whether Sweden’s bet pays off in the long term.

How in the world will “time tell”?

Sweden has a worse death rate than its comparable neighbors, it’s economy has been hit as much if not more, and it has no greater “herd immunity” than the rest.

And the neighbors are opening up in a way Sweden cannot.

Essentially, Sweden did go into lockdown, and the difference from its neighbors were at the very margins. The economy was affected linearly by the additional activity at the margin, in other words, not by much, but on the other hand the virus growth was impacted exponentially, causing a significantly higher infection and death rate.

And this is Sweden, a country with a highly educated population, extremely good social and health systems, that was far better equipped to implement voluntary measures than the vast majority of the world.

Our (Germany) rates are actually somewhat surprising to me. We seem to generally have done very well when compared to other (European) countries of similar density.

> but the model says they’ll hit a nasty second wave in mid October.

I am wary of modeling "that far" in time, because while vaccines may take a little more to get ready, there are plenty of trials starting or going on for pharmacological treatments, which may give readouts as early as September.

While perhaps they won't be able to avoid infections, they might change clinical management significantly, in particular monoclonal antibodies.

5 times as many deaths as their neighbors, with as much, if not greater economic hit than their neighbors, and an economic hut that is continuing unlike their neighbors who are now much closer to normality.

If this is exactly how it’s supposed to be working I shudder to think what the bad case scenarios would have been.

Short term economic damage is a) hard to measure and b) meaningless

Sweden’s betting on long term recovery in light of second/third/etc waves. As much as it detracts from the catastrophic fear and loathing narrative, it has sound economic and epidemiological foundations.

Tegnell reflected on mistakes in his approach. News that was quickly rephrased as "Wrong approach admitted" (e.g. by Bloomberg).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-s...

That's more than we can say for US/China. They keep up the appearance of being "the best". While the approach of Sweden was much more measured and transparent in my opinion.

Also, Sweden left it's constitution in full effect. Most countries did not, which I find VERY problematic. Constitutions should be pandemic proof.

Sorry, which countries ditched their constitutions during COVID?

Either sidestepped (the Netherlands), or temporarily overruled (most countries of Europe).

Constitutions provide freedom of movement/association/gathering, usually, putting a fine on being close to others or gathering is messing with the constitution.

It's okay to do so, but only in real crazy events. A virus with a 99+ survival rate is not such event IMHO. We need to make our constitutions virus-proof.

de facto Italy did. None of the early acts went through the parliament, but were moves made by the PM alone.

Suspensions of rights in exceptional cases is granted only in the case of war, or by law (and that means going through the parliament).

Did Italy throw out their constitution, or does it permit emergency acts by the PM? The distinction is critical.

There's a law from 1992 that describes the process of "state of emergency" and decrees

https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/1992/03/17/092G0253/...

Starting from article 5. It seems that any such state of emergency can last up to 12 months and be extended for 12 more months. The current state of emergency is going to last until the end of July, and there are discussions about extending it.

That's a regular law, not part of the constitution, article 77 of the constitution provides further rules:

https://www.senato.it/1025?sezione=127&articolo_numero_artic...

It's not clear, and I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I found some interesting articles that describe the situation:

https://www.agensir.it/italia/2020/05/07/dpcm-e-coinvolgimen...

Context: the emergency acts are "decreto legge" and "dpcm" they are listed here:

http://www.governo.it/it/coronavirus-normativa

And this explains what dpcm are:

https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreto_ministeriale_(ordina...

Apparently, article 77 describes 2 deadlines: 5 days for the parliament to vote on the decrees and 60 days for the laws to be finalized.

I think that the crux of the issue is: whatever is inside those "decreto legge/dpcm", it has to be approved by parliament... There have been multiple such decrees, and the only controversial point is for how long can a parliament decision be delayed (in theory only for up to 5 days, but I'm starting to get lost in details).

Due to how many decrees have been created, I'd need to check for when each one of them has been (or is being planned to be) voted on

Most of them, were, IIRC, only "reported to" parliament. After reopening on May 4th, some of them were voted.

I admit I worded my post poorly: a state of emergency exists, but limiting constitutional rights is, AFAICS, only permitted through law.

"DPCM" are mere administrative acts, and a few people expert in the judicial system have raised objections about their use in this way (including the head of the constitutional court). In particular, the debate is whether they can or can't limit constitutional rights.

There's no such thing as a state of emergency, only the state of war. Anything else needs to go through the parliament, directly or indirectly.

By indirectly I mean something akin to the USA executive order, but agreed upon the cabinet, not the PM, then countersigned by the President, who can veto it. Then it lasts 60 days and must be confirmed by the parliament, or becomes void.

Keep in mind the constitution was written right after WW2, so the writers were carrying the scars of "emergency measures" going into dictatorship.

There are a few things that can be done by the health ministry, but nothing as big as a country wide lockdown.

> Sorry, which countries ditched their constitutions during COVID?

It really depends on your personal definition of "ditched their constitution".

For example, Spain "declared state of alarm" which suspends temporarily some constitutional rights.

> For example, Spain "declared state of alarm" which suspends temporarily some constitutional rights.

A procedure that is presumably permitted by said constitution, right?

> A procedure that is presumably permitted by said constitution, right?

Yes, the Spanish constitution does explicitly support state of alarm, which is a way to suspend constitutional rights.

https://english.elpais.com/politics/2020-03-13/what-is-a-sta...

Then when they needed that state of alarm extended, they started negotiating with separatist parties and all sense of decency vanished in a puff of smoke.

Unfortunately during a state of alarm is when you need your rights the most.

Your comment doesn't make any sense. Could you elaborate on that in case you've just left out any key detail?

Well what I mean to say is during a panic the government has the most means and motivation to step on your rights. It’s also a time when the tyranny of the majority can come into play.

The interment of Japanese citizens during WW2 is one example.

That happened in a country with a Constitution, which sorta proves that you shouldn't put your faith in a Constitution.

The only way good things get done is if people continually fight and push for them. Laziness will doom you, no matter what pretty words are on a paper somewhere.

And in a pandemic, "good things get done" has a very different definition than it does at other times, something no static set of law is going to be able to anticipate. You have to be active and you have to be flexible.

It depends on which rights.

Certainly, many rights need not be affected by a pandemic at all, and countries that have tried to use it as an excuse to crack down on those rights should be condemned. For example, the Indian government has threatened freedom of the press by trying to censor news coverage of the pandemic. [1]

On the other hand, as an opposite extreme, freedom of movement is something that in normal times is considered a right, but absolutely can and should be limited during a pandemic.

Other rights are somewhere in between. For example, in the U.S., the use of the Defense Production Act to compel ventilator production could be considered a violation of economic freedom (which has often been thought of as a right, though it's not a Constitutional right), and it wasn't strictly necessary. But in practice there wasn't too much controversy over it; most people seem to tolerate the idea of the government temporarily commandeering the economy in emergencies, especially for something as obviously beneficial as making ventilators. (Though there might have been more controversy if a Democratic president had done it, but that's getting into the political weeds…)

[1] https://cpj.org/2020/03/indian-supreme-court-denies-governme...

Here's a list of countries with HR abuses during the pandemic. Most democratic contries have Human Rights provisions in their constutions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_issues_related_...

Most European states, including Russia have also signed the European Convention on Human Rights.

China, Poland, Turkey, Turkmenistan...

All of these countries had troubling human rights issues pre-COVID.

Poland had HR issues?

Absolutely.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/27...

> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke by phone Sunday and agreed to open a dialogue to avoid further diplomatic fallout following Poland’s initial approval of a law making it a criminal offense to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.

I believe they backtracked a bit on that one after the outcry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_ideology-free_zone

> An "LGBT-free zone" (Polish: Strefa wolna od LGBT) also referred to as "LGBT free zone" (Polish: Strefa wolna od LGBT) refers to some regions of Poland which have declared themselves unwelcoming of an alleged "LGBT ideology." As of June 2020, some 100 municipalities (including five voivodships), encompassing about a third of the country, declared themselves "LGBT-free zones".

I’m sorry, do you seriously consider these issues to be as bad as the human rights situation in China?

You asked "Poland had HR issues?", not "Poland had HR issues of exactly equal magnitude to China?"

The highlighted issues make it clear Poland was willing to infringe on speech/expression rights even without the excuse of COVID.

Are there countries which don’t have HR issues?

How did you know that China had human rights issues?

Yup. Iceland and generally nordic states, Canada.

Are you from any of those countries? If not, how do you know?

So you basically asked a question but with the assumption that the answer is unknowable.

Great show of good faith there /s.

> That's more than we can say for US/China. They keep up the appearance of being "the best".

That appearance is long gone in the US. Last week Trump complained to the press that the US isn't doing as bad as we think because Mexico and Brazil are also doing poorly.

So there's a long way between "we are the best" and "hey, maybe just maybe we don't suck as much as other countries that are doing awfully bad".

You are also describing reasons why Sweden went for this strategy - their availability of space, limited physical contact etc. The argument is whether the strategy is working or not for Sweden vs a full lockdown in Sweden and not whether Sweden's strategy would have worked in other countries.

This would be okay if the strategy was explicitly "we will let people die and then hope that everything goes well once everyone's outdoors in summer." At least then people would honestly debate whether that's a morally/economically solid stance to take.

But in that case they'll also have to explain what their strategy will be at the end of summer.

They have been very transparent what the strategy is. Long term, since this won’t go away in just a few months the restrictions must be sustainable. Take into account the overall health and well-being of the people, don’t worry only about COVID-19. Only do what there are scientific evidence that it actually makes a difference. Make sure that the spread is slow enough so the health care system doesn’t get overwhelmed.

> Take into account the overall health and well-being

This is a very concise way of putting what some believe is the best plan, thanks.

I don't think there is any clear or morally unambiguous answer to the first part ("we will let people die"). It simply is either people die now of virus, or die later of economic fallout. Also see the Trolley Problem [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Yeah I also noticed lately that the numbers collapsed after a peak on June 24th. The people being diagnosed on the 24th should have been infected just about on midsummer. And then the numbers collapsed. That matches extremely well my experience that after midsummer (June 21st) most Swedes clear out the cities, going to summer houses or abroad or, failing that, being outdoors as much as possible.

So I was "surprised" to not even see that fact be mentioned in the article and would be cautious about attributing this to the Swedish strategy. Did they make any policy changes in the days leading up to the 24th?

There is no real "collapse" in numbers, the number of hospital cases have been in a (noisy) straight line down from April and forwards: https://www.icuregswe.org/data--resultat/covid-19-i-svensk-i... (the graph with "Antal vtf" on the y-axis). Those graphs are directly from the hospital reporting systems.