Lily
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I’m having a hard time understanding why the author of this blog is so eager to see Joe Biden lose this election. Because if Joe loses we all know who will win.
In the messy panoply of global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden stands out. Unlike its Nordic and European peers, Sweden decided early on for a “soft” approach, forgoing lockdowns for subtle changes to commerce and entertainment, voluntary mitigation guidelines, and encouraging working from home. “This is what has happened,” economic correspondent Peter S. Goodman reports in The New York Times: “Not only have thousands more people died than in neighboring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Sweden’s economy has fared little better.”
“They literally gained nothing,” Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, tells the Times. “It’s a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.” Sweden did see slightly less contraction in the first quarter, but now its economic pain is essentially equal to its Nordic neighbors. And Norway, which “was not only quick to impose an aggressive lockdown, but early to relax it as the virus slowed,” is actually “expected to see a more rapid economic turnaround,” Goodman reports.
Ironically, Bloomberg News reports, the social distancing requirements in Sweden are now more stringent than in Denmark, Norway, and Finland, all of which opted for strict lockdowns early on. Sweden’s 5,420 COVID-19 deaths may not seem like much compared with 130,000 in the U.S., but per capita that works out to 40 percent more fatalities than in the U.S. and 12 times more than Norway, seven times more than Finland, and six times more than Denmark, the Times notes.
I really miss the Worldometer chart that you used to have at the beginning of each day’s posting. It was always the first thing I looked at in the morning.
Rioters and looters made up an extremely small percentage of the number of protesters who have been out in the streets, most of whom have been completely peaceful. The article makes it sound like all of them were doing bad things and that is completely untrue. And often the violence that there was was done by the police, not then protesters.
You say no-one ever said hydroxychloroquine would prevent infection, but that’s why Trump said he was taking it.
