Sherkeu
Illuminator
Sweden was hit more for what its neighbors did than their own choices.
You cannot continue normal business and trade with other countries if segments of those external economies are effectively shut down.
Cont: The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 2
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Sweden was hit more for what its neighbors did than their own choices.
You cannot continue normal business and trade with other countries if segments of those external economies are effectively shut down.
Sweden didn't shut down as much as other countries. But they didn't carry on as normal either.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53498133
And they still have a high death rate.
Sherkeu
Illuminator
Agree. They chose less restricted measures than others.
Sweden, unlike its neighbors has these larger occupancy nursing homes (The US has them as well). They were exceptionally vulnerable to the spread in those places but realized it too late to do anything. Same happened in New York.
Skilled nursing homes were the Achilles heel in many places. Just the basic 'senior community' where residents live independently weren't affected the same way.
Minoosh
Penultimate Amazing
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The only issue with me was getting over my own sympathetic "flinch" response. Actually at age 14 I was trained to give testosterone injections to castrated baby chickens. This was an important experiment for some reason.
Venom
Philosopher
I feel there was little President Trump could have done to actually stop the spread of COVID-19 from April onward. I don't fault him for that. The government should have thrown everything it had at the growing threat in February.
And even so I think there would be tens thousands of cases in the U.S. regardless.
What I do fault Trump for is his insistence that the COVID-19 virus would simply go away in a matter of months and that we were overreacting.
And even so I think there would be tens thousands of cases in the U.S. regardless.
What I do fault Trump for is his insistence that the COVID-19 virus would simply go away in a matter of months and that we were overreacting.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
Weasel words. Trade may not be 'normal', but that doesn't mean it isn't viable.
Throughout this pandemic we kept hearing about how lockdowns would destroy the economy because people can't go to crowded pubs or get a haircut. But these are an insignificant part of total economic activity. Turns out that essential services (the most important part of the economy) can still be provided even in a full lockdown, and people still pay for them. Retail businesses concentrate on serious walk-in customers and online sales, factories provide PPE and social distancing for their workers, offices and schools operate 'virtually' etc., and assistance is provided for those who cannot work. So people grow longer hair and have clearer heads, but the economy doesn't collapse - it adapts.
The faster and more effectively countries responded to the virus, the quicker they could reopen for trading with other countries who did the same. In forestry or motor vehicles for example (two of Sweden's largest export industries), having to stockpile production for a few weeks is not a huge problem. But if other countries refuse to trade because they are afraid of catching your virus then you do have a problem. If you can't meet production quota because too many of your workers are sick or worried about getting infected then you have an even worse problem.
According to some reports, Sweden's economy contracted faster than neighboring countries that did a better job dealing to the virus. But a month or two of slightly lower GDP doesn't mean a lot. Countries that swiftly control the virus and adapt to covid conditions soon recover as pent up demand is met, and while some sections of the economy may decline others improve. Countries that don't control the virus are more vulnerable to long-term economic decline.
Sweden chose to not shut down and let the population reach 'herd immunity'. This decision was not based on protecting the economy, but a misguided belief that the virus was relatively benign and vulnerable people could be protected. When other countries saw what was happening they - rightly - shut their borders with Sweden to protect themselves from this lunacy. That result was the logical conclusion of Sweden's choice - not the other countries.
Minoosh
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I don't see how you can reconcile your first paragraph with your second. When leadership was required he promoted magical thinking, egged on the folks who were going to "liberate" Michigan, constantly undermined his own experts and refused to model responsible behavior. IMO he contributed to a lot of deaths. He also moved to manipulate supplies of tests and PPE in order to reward the states that kissed his ass.
A bunch of Republican governors took their lead from him and rushed reopenings when the prudent thing to do was hunker down for a few more weeks. Trump's need for personal adulation interfered with what should have been a straightforward public health mission. He's directly responsible for some of those tens of thousands deaths.
ETA: The senior campus where I live kept COVID-19 completely out of its nursing home and assisted living operation. Then the governor green-lighted bar openings and people, especially younger people, celebrated by congregating without masks or social distancing. As a direct result, I believe, the virus found a home in young health-care workers who brought the infection into the facility and 9 residents and one staff member died. With aggressive testing, contract tracing and isolation, the campus has held these numbers steady for several weeks now. Meanwhile the governor rescinded some of his earlier closures. To his credit, I suppose.
Is there any doubt Trump thinks people in nursing homes are losers?
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Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
Sorta? That's a take that's not including a couple things, though. First, it's pretty much directly because of Trump that the government wasn't acting early, in a coordinated fashion, or competently. As in, besides the preceding (and ongoing!) sabotage, Trump reportly even stepped in to STOP the government response. Then there is the part where he's actively acting to sow disinformation to the general populace and push the GOP into making terrible decisions from the start until now, which has had a very real effect on the spread of COVID. Then there's the part about using political strategy to determine what response is taken - in this case, the calculation was that they expected that it would hurt blue states more and that *that* would give them ammo to attack the Democratic leadership for political advantage. So much more could be said, but... yes. Once it was wildly out of control, which happened in very significant measure directly because of Trump and his Administration, it became dramatically harder to do much about.
Forget February, though. The US should have started acting in *early* January at the latest, with at least more general precautions and training at borders and airports, ramping up PPE production, and other preparatory measures, as part of a larger, unified government effort, had things been run competently. Then we wouldn't have needed to throw everything we had at it in the first place. That an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is still extremely applicable here.
Cases? Of course. COVID was pretty much definitely going to reach us regardless - hazard of so much international travel. I'd suggest that I wouldn't be surprised at all by there being tens of thousands of cases even with a competent government response. It's just that the case numbers and deaths would be a tiny fraction of what they are now. As I've pointed out/agreed a number of times, it's not Trump's fault that COVID got here. That was never something that I've criticized him for in the first place, though. The absurdly numerous things that Trump has done to make the disaster worse are his fault, however.
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newyorkguy
Penultimate Amazing
Tens of thousands of cases in the U.S. no matter what the trump administration had done? We're up to 6.2 million cases. Let's also not overlook the fact that Sweden chose a unique strategy and has been widely criticized for it. But as the trend charts below demonstrate, Sweden has gotten much better results than the United States.
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thaiboxerken
Penultimate Amazing
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The Trump regime had a national strategy to deal with Covid lined up and ready to go back in February'ish. However, they decided not to implement it upon news that Covid was hitting liberal cities and minority communities hardest.
One huge problem covid brutally exposed, in at least the (to date) worst hotspot (downstate NY, adjacent counties in NJ and CT), was how inadequate infection control was in care homes (in general, there are many exceptional exceptions). At all levels. Huge numbers of avoidable deaths, if only because oversight - local, state, federal - was so woeful.
Swift, informed leadership, from Trump, in January, could surely have made a difference, though only historians a decade or so from now will be able to give credible ranges.
Venom
Philosopher
I don't know when epidemiologists or American intelligence first noticed something was up, but the disease and its agent were first described in reasonable detail in
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thaiboxerken
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Their current stance is that we should ramp up infections while reporting less on it.
Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
As a bit of a quibble, I'm tempted to say that it widened exposure more than exposed, myself. Care homes have had quite a few very serious systemic problems for quite a long time - it's quite recommended that if you have a relative in care, to visit them frequently and stay quite alert for problem signs. Of some direct relevance, though, IIRC, the Trump Administration was literally working to weaken what mandatory infection control there was in care homes even well after the pandemic was really starting to hit us.
To poke at that general issue more - Trump reduced fines for nursing homes that put residents at risk. Then Covid-19 happened.
The Obama administration cracked down on nursing homes with infection control problems. Trump reversed course.
Publicly, sure. The less public reports started well before then back in 2019, though - at least as far back as November. That's far, far more than enough warning to have a good interagency preparation and coordination in place, alert, and responsive - and indeed, under the Pandemic Playbook that was left to the Trump Administration, that's the kind of thing that should have been happening. Instead, as you likely know, we had a chaotic mess in the response, to be kind. There's also the matter where Trump had pointedly sabotaged things like the China part of the PREDICT program (and so much else), which was there almost specifically to help warn and help protect us (and the rest of the world) about pretty much exactly this kind of thing by allowing us to help the country in question contain and hopefully eliminate threats early on and helping to warn the rest of the world just in case. By sabotaging that, Trump bears some responsibility for the deaths world-wide, quite frankly.
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Meadmaker
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What I go back to is that on January 31st, Trump enacted travel restrictions against travelers from China. After that, there's no way he could conceivably contend that he didn't know the problem existed, so after that, it's on him, as the guy in charge.
And he probably should have been on top of it and started working even earlier, but there's no way he can deny the problem as of that date.
I admire your optimism.
Skeptic Ginger
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Evidence??
Safe-Keeper
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This is the best article I was able to find on the subject.
The Great Zaganza
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Projections have 400,000 US deaths by January.
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