From Psycho Creighton today:
Sweden’s impressive legacy — ABBA, dynamite, Ikea, for instance — has expanded significantly in 2020, having provided the world with an example of a sane response to what’s turned out a relatively mild pandemic.
The Scandinavian nation deserves enduring credit from reasonable people everywhere for resisting the destructive authoritarian mindset that enveloped democratic nations this year. Sweden was viciously attacked by supposed experts and mainstream media all year that if it didn’t crush commerce by fiat and suspend civil liberties indefinitely, as has occurred in Europe, many US states, and of course Victoria, more than 90,000 Swedes would die.
The army of lockdown zealots will never be able to say lockdowns are essential to avert disaster, if that wasn’t already clear enough from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
Historians will struggle to see a public policy disaster in Sweden. The number of deaths there from all causes so far this year, just less than 68,000, is fewer than over the same period in 2015, adjusted for population size. Far from an apocalypse, the total death rate from January 1 to September 20 is barely distinguishable from recent years, notwithstanding a jump from 2019, during which it was unusually low.
While its European neighbours, which bludgeoned their economies for months, now battle “second waves” (albeit with far lower death rates), Sweden has barely had any COVID-19 deaths since mid-July alongside a much milder uptick in so-called cases, which in any case often mean little.
We don’t know yet how many folks will die in Sweden this year. It’s not over. But, if it were an extra few thousand, which seems likely, then that makes the lockdown policy response worth it.
Why? Because the alternative doesn’t work. Letting the virus rip also destroys the economy, right along with your humanity:
In Australia, we can see this right now. If Victoria were to have not locked down then its 3% mortality rate suggests tens of thousands of dead – including perhaps YOU – and no economy whatsoever, as it was sealed off from everywhere else in a bubble of suffering.
Yesterday’s NAB survey made this point loud and clear. Virus states (including wide-open NSW) are lagging non-virus state recoveries badly:
Now, before others pile in, let me make a few other points:
- We can hold more than one thought in our heads at once so health lockdowns do not justify naked grabs for power which should absolutely be fought, such as those deployed by Manchurian Dan in VIC today.
- Support for appropriate health lockdowns should be a part of a broader strategy to stop the virus, not the only one. NSW has done a marvelous job with north Asian-style testing and tracing.
- But there is no point arguing for that if you can’t do it, as VIC proved that it couldn’t.
- Now that it has had time to reform its testing and tracing processes, VIC should accelerate reopening ensuring that it has got those processes right. Otherwise all doing Psycho Creighton is doing is egging on the next lockdown.
