US didn't have a federal strategy to deal with the pandemic. They shot at their own foot and didn't give themselves a chance to be successful.
The rest of the (developed, and many underdeveloped) world dealt with it and are moving on. I'm watching Champions league finals on TV and Wuhan pool party clips on twitter, thinking wtf went wrong here.
They did at the outset of the current administration but chose to fire the people trained for 'reasons'. When the pandemic finally pressed on the country, the game plan handed down from the previous admin had been abandoned for years at that point by the current administration.
"Why should American taxpayers throw good money at pandemic planning when they only happen about once every hundred years in the US? The last one was what, almost exactly a hundred years ago, what are the odds it would happen during this administration?"
The logic remains breathtaking, and the irony would be delicious if it weren't so deadly.
> The rest of the (developed, and many underdeveloped) world dealt with it and are moving on.
I'm not really sure on that, lets take greece, which was praised for their strategy (I was in greece during the lockdown). They didnt have a strategy, they just locked down before there was an outbreak and blocked flights, so no spread. Now they have an outbreak because they stopped all there restrictions. They were just lucky
Look at New Zealand, their strategy is to prevent anyone to enter the country with covid, well that works as long as not a log of people fly to NZ. Now that flights have restarted, they have like 3 cases so they lockdown the entire city, well, doesnt seem very smart in my opinion.
The only countries which are doing well, are the Asian countries, China (can't really trust their figure), Taiwan, south korea same as NZ, but restricting all freedom of citizens.
The smartest country of all, is Sweden, never locked down, explained to citizen the situation. Managed to get the situation under control without any lockdown, and probably will reach herd immunity before anyone else. Time will tell this is too soon to judge, but they seem well positioned for winning
>The smartest country of all, is Sweden, never locked down, explained to citizen the situation. Managed to get the situation under control without any lockdown, and probably will reach herd immunity before anyone else. Time will tell this is too soon to judge, but they seem well positioned for winning
I keep seeing this narrative but I can never find the data to support it. When you look at the data, Sweden has the worst of both worlds.
1. Among their neighbors, only Germany has more deaths than Sweden. Norway, Denmark and Finland have fewer almost an order of magnitude less cases and deaths.
2. Despite not being government sanctioned, people still chose to self isolate meaning that the still suffered the economic fallout of that decision. Turns out, a global pandemic is bad for business whether or not your government decides to shut everything down.
There is no metric by which Sweden is doing any better than anyone else, and is doing a lot worse than their neighbors.
>> 1. Among their neighbors, only Germany has more deaths than Sweden. Norway, Denmark and Finland have fewer almost an order of magnitude less cases and deaths.
Geographic comparisons are of limited usefulness; MA had 10x the death rate of near neighbors NH,VT& ME. There are too many other factors to consider. Sweden still did better than UK, France, Spain, Italy and many others.
>> 2. Despite not being government sanctioned, people still chose to self isolate meaning that the still suffered the economic fallout of that decision. Turns out, a global pandemic is bad for business whether or not your government decides to shut everything down.
Mobility data would suggest otherwise; no masks, kids still in school etc. Life has continued with some restrictions. We could have done the same with similar outcomes. Economy definitely took a hit, but less so than other eurorzone countries.
>> There is no metric by which Sweden is doing any better than anyone else, and is doing a lot worse than their neighbors.
The fact that the pandemic is effectively done in Sweden is one. We still dont have an exit strategy.
>>The fact that the pandemic is effectively done in Sweden is one.
Acting like this is a foregone conclusion is the height of arrogance. Diseases spread in waves. They could just be at the low point between two waves.
We won't know until years from now. Just asserting you're right when there are still this many unknown factors smacks of someone looking for data after coming to a conclusion.
fair point, but do you know that the under 65 excess deaths metrics for Sweden is already almost identical to previous years ie. if you were looking at the charts you would not even know they had a pandemic. I suspect "years from now" looking at the US metrics it will be similar.
You can clearly see excess mortality for Sweden, higher than previous years.
Edit: missed the under 65 bit, would be interested in seeing that data for Sweden, but you can see the collated graphs for all the countries that contribute and you definitely can spot spikes in the lower age ranges.
This is a very specific claim. I don't doubt you but something like this should always be backed up with sources or people will dismiss you immediately.
The metric by which it's doing better, is freedom. Nobody has been forced to change their lifestyle, if they did, thats because they decided so.
The number of case is under control [1], almost no death now (and not hiding after a lockdown, really no death) so probably less death in the future compared to those countries
The key metric Sweden is winning at is that they're already at the finish line. They never locked down and their death counts are the lowest they've been since before the pandemic. Single digits and zero in recent days.
No, they are not. Death rate is low everywhere in North hemisphere right now because of summer period. In winter, death rate will climb back to 4%, like in Brazil right now.
I don’t understand how Sweden could be a good example to follow: they now are at 573 deaths per million, close to Italy 585. (France is 466, Germany 110, Norway 48, all flat. US 585 and rising fast)
If you look at Belgium 859 deaths per millions, Sweden (and the US) could go much higher without any preventive action (I believe Sweden is now acting more in line with other countries?).
The Champions League finals definitely aren't an indication this part of the world has dealt with it and is moving on. There's a huge amount of intrusive Covid-19 restrictions around those, from obvious things like no spectators to putting the entire teams in isolation (compliance has been... mixed), and even then I have my doubts that they'd be able to finish the season if it went on any longer due to the exponential growth in cases again in Europe.
Also we shouldn't forget that "American independence" really also means "selfish". Many Americans can care less who dies, as long as it directly doesn't affect them, thus fights about simple things like mask compliance, or not going to a bar for a while.
That in addition to the federal government not supporting people and businesses while the economy is shut down, leads to this obvious outcome we're experiencing right now.
The rest of the (developed, and many underdeveloped) world dealt with it and are moving on. I'm watching Champions league finals on TV and Wuhan pool party clips on twitter, thinking wtf went wrong here.