They definitely have high numbers of covid. So does most everyone. :(
As of October--How often have you worn a face mask outside your home to protect yourself or others from coronavirus?
Sweden:
Always------- 4.3%
Not at all-- 76.7%
Spain:
Always------ 95.8%
Not at all-- 0.3%
I confess I have stopped driving on these numbers. Seems way more noise then signal. Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain. Do you also have a good launch point to get caught up on analysts?
>Death rates, for example, at a naive guidance look worse for Spain.
Spain is about 4 times as densely populated as Sweden, you'd expect spread and death rates for a communicable disease to be higher.
My question on accuracy is more on how well we know the source. A scientific online passive poll is likely still pretty bad. Especially if taken from a partisan audience.
Also, just to emphasize. I don't see any obvious points. But that not includes agreeing with the approach Sweden took. I just don't understand much of the reporting focusing on the voluntary aspect without establishing that Sweden had bad compliance with mask wearing.
>without establishing that Sweden had bad compliance with mask wearing.
I think what you're seeing is that it's taken as a given because no one is claiming the opposite. Many of the people stating this live in Sweden, and it's obviously not hard to walk around in public and take notice of the fact that very few people are wearing masks
Here's a few articles with reports from people living in Sweden estimating that less than 10% of people wear masks in public [3,4].
[1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-08/22/c_139308631.htm [2] https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1279755135892234241/photo/... [3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/sweden-really-lik... [4] https://www.aier.org/article/masks-in-sweden/