Current Events > Sweden's economy "the least harmed in Europe".

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sweden is the only European country to have had economic growth during the first quarter of 2020 and the drop in GDP after March is the smallest in the EU. The US economy has suffered more than the Swedish one as well it seems.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-coronavirus-economy-relaxed-lockdown-stronger-rest-of-europe-2020-7

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At what cost of life?

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The23rdMagus posted...

At what cost of life?

5646 lives so far. The majority people in elderly care homes.

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Bump

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BalanceLost posted...

5646 lives so far. The majority people in elderly care homes.

not worth the cost.

sweeden will go down as the europen nation to really screw up the corona pandemic

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Ah yes, blood for profits, nothing wrong there

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Their healthcare system can actually handle the load.

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Ubergeneral3 posted...

not worth the cost.

sweeden will go down as the europen nation to really screw up the corona pandemic

Not really, there are other countries in europe with similar or higher death rates per capita. If some analysis could be done to see if there is something they could have done to protect their elderly better that would be interesting and possibly useful for future pandemics. Although they probably don't have idiots holding covid parties over there so maybe any data gathered there is not all that applicable to the US.

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But the economy!
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No wonder all the smear tactics from "liberal" press against them.

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50 years from now there are still going to be Sweden apologists saying they were right on this and everyone else was wrong

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TomNook20 posted...

Not really, there are other countries in europe with similar or higher death rates per capita. If some analysis could be done to see if there is something they could have done to protect their elderly better that would be interesting and possibly useful for future pandemics. Although they probably don't have idiots holding covid parties over there so maybe any data gathered there is not all that applicable to the US.

The analysis done so far show that nursing homes with few permanent employees got high death counts. Nursing homes are run locally while all other healthcare is run regionally which has led to vastly different responses. 40 of the 290 municipalities got 70% of the deaths.

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TomNook20 posted...

If some analysis could be done to see if there is something they could have done to protect their elderly better that would be interesting and possibly useful for future pandemics.

Quarantine for prisons and nursing homes should involve the staff as well.

Sweden has 559 deaths per million, seventh worst in the world with European countries UK(669 dpm), Spain(608 dpm), and Italy(580 dpm) are worse (Spain and Italy were already over the edge before the world really started reacting though). For reference population density in Europe for that group UK(9th), Italy(14th), Spain(6th), and Sweden (44th). Similar European countries for density would be Finland, Norway, and Belarus who have deaths per million ~50.

So you know, just 10 times as many deaths to save ~2% of GDP.

If you want to go see a successful country, go study what Germany did, they have a ridiculously low 110 deaths per million despite being the 11th most dense European country.

The prevent 5700 suicides

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@realnifty1 An economic crash and mass unemployment tends to lead to crime, suffering and death. Physicians across the world have also warned about the negative health effects of being locked in your home for several months (obesity, strokes, cardiovascular diseases, clinical depression which increases the risk of suicide). A pandemic like this affects so many factors and you need to look at them all even though it is very difficult.

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https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/21/coronavirus-swedish-herd-immunity-drove-up-death-toll-column/5472100002/

at least some swedes are capable of recognizing their mistakes

The Herd Immunity thing wasnt the biggest mistake, the biggest mistake was that they reacted too late, were not prepared and didnt do enough to protect and help the target groups.

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I don't really know enough, I feel, to say what Sweden's government did regarding the virus was wrong. And in the future being able to analyze the effect of differing responses will most certainly be helpful on a global scale.

But this topic reads so defensively and so propaganda-like it feels like that guy who gets paid by the Chinese government to post pro-China shit on the politics board.
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DeadBankerDream posted...

But this topic reads so defensively and so propaganda-like it feels like that guy who gets paid by the Chinese government to post pro-China shit on the politics board.

This topic is a follow-up response to the big topic from the other week where some Americans like @Antifar claimed that Swedens strategy had failed since it didnt reduce the economic damage.

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BalanceLost posted...

Physicians across the world have also warned about the negative health effects of being locked in your home for several months (obesity, strokes, cardiovascular diseases, clinical depression which increases the risk of suicide).

Good thing countries like Germany didn't "lock people in their homes" for months on end. In fact, I don't think very many did at all, most only for the 14 day quarantine
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teepan95 posted...

Good thing countries like Germany didn't "lock people in their homes" for months on end. In fact, I don't think very many did at all, most only for the 14 day quarantine

If we exclude non-Western countries where many have used armed soldiers to keep people in their homes the situation in the West has been martial law in Spain and Italy; written permission slips to leave your home in France for a daily trip to the grocery store/pharmacy - after a few months the French were allowed 1 hour of outdoor physical activity alone during the morning or evening; the British were allowed one trip outdoors a day to go to the grocery store/pharmacy. Those are the ones I can say from the top of my head. Didnt Belgium also do a similar crackdown? And Germany only allowed two people to meet right?

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https://nyheder.tv2.dk/udland/2020-07-22-25-svenske-laeger-og-forskere-i-opraab-til-usa-goer-ikke-hvad-vi-gjorde

Use google translate..

Cranie posted...

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/udland/2020-07-22-25-svenske-laeger-og-forskere-i-opraab-til-usa-goer-ikke-hvad-vi-gjorde

Use google translate..

The part about expected deaths in the coming months is inaccurate. The staticians rounded up 0.1 to 1.0 multiple times leading to several thousand more predicted deaths. The calculation error was admitted by those who did it.

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using corpses as a table for cash counting

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Jesus, and I thought deluded anti-lockdowners were an american exclusive problem

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html

This is what has happened: Not only have thousands more people died than in neighboring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Swedens economy has fared little better.
They literally gained nothing, said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Its a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.
The results of Swedens experience are relevant well beyond Scandinavian shores. In the United States, where the virus is spreading with alarming speed, many states have at President Trumps urging avoided lockdowns or lifted them prematurely on the assumption that this would foster economic revival, allowing people to return to workplaces, shops and restaurants......
Swedens central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent. The unemployment rate jumped to 9 percent in May from 7.1 percent in March. The overall damage to the economy means the recovery will be protracted, with unemployment remaining elevated, Oxford Economics concluded in a recent research note.
This is more or less how damage caused by the pandemic has played out in Denmark, where the central bank expects that the economy will shrink 4.1 percent this year, and where joblessness has edged up to 5.6 percent in May from 4.1 percent in March.
In short, Sweden suffered a vastly higher death rate while failing to collect on the expected economic gains.
...Swedens laissez faire approach does appear to have minimized the economic damage compared with its neighbors in the first three months of the year, according to an assessment by the International Monetary Fund. But that effect has worn off as the force of the pandemic has swept through the global economy, and as Swedish consumers have voluntarily curbed their shopping anyway.

Sweden fucked itself and it's people for literally no reason, and the only reason they haven't become as big of global laughing stock as the US is because they didn't elect a manchild with alzheimer's as their head of state. God help us if the rest of the world had looked to either country as anything but a shining example of the exact wrong thing to do in a pandemic.

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@Frolex

That is the economic article which got posted in the previous topic I mentioned and the economic parts got debunked in that topic and this newer analysis just backs up that the New York Times peddled inaccuracies.

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so tc, how many people do you think should sacrifice themselves for the economy?

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BalanceLost posted...

This topic is a follow-up response to the big topic from the other week where some Americans like @Antifar claimed that Swedens strategy had failed since it didnt reduce the economic damage.

Sacrificing human lives so that rich people don't lose money is a failure you fucking toad. Jesus christ man, I don't know how to explain to you that human lives are worth more than just the dollar amount you can extract off of their existence.

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Ubergeneral3 posted...

not worth the cost.

sweeden will go down as the europen nation to really screw up the corona pandemic

We did a complete lockdown here and lost about the same amount of people in nursing homes.

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BalanceLost posted...

And Germany only allowed two people to meet right?

Not being allowed to meet up with multiple groups of people =\= "locking people in their homes" for months on end
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averagejoel posted...

so tc, how many people do you think should sacrifice themselves for the economy?

ScazarMeltex posted...

Sacrificing human lives so that rich people don't lose money is a failure you fucking toad. Jesus christ man, I don't know how to explain to you that human lives are worth more than just the dollar amount you can extract off of their existence.

Preferably none. There are however indications based on investigations done by IVO (The Inspection Authority of Nursing and Care) that the death rate would be about the same even with a lockdown due to the already exisiting flaws in our elderly care in several municipalities. As I already have written in this topic: elderly care is run by the municipalities and 40 of our 290 municipalities got 70% of the deaths. Structural flaws in elderly care started appearing in several municipalities after control of elderly care was transfered to the municipalities in the 1990s. The power transfer was a Neoliberal move which should have been reversed years ago but there has not been a majority in Riksdagen for such a decision in a long time. And economically Sweden isnt like the US where it mainly seems to be the rich who save money. Our healthcare system has been holding up well (There is a major difference between healthcare and elderly care here) and it relies on funding which requires people to work and pay taxes (like other important systems in Sweden).

I have a question for you guys out of curiosity. The Government could not legally implement the type of lockdown most Western countries have imposed since it is illegal according to the Constitution. We have a minority Government and they did ask Riksdagen for certain emergency powers but Riksdagen only allowed a watered down version which has now expired since the law came with a time limit. So lets say that the Government now were to want a lockdown - should they violate the Constitution? Riksdagen would then have the PM removed from office though.

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teepan95 posted...

Not being allowed to meet up with multiple groups of people =\= "locking people in their homes" for months on end

What about all the other countries I posted?

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BalanceLost posted...

teepan95 posted...

Not being allowed to meet up with multiple groups of people =\= "locking people in their homes" for months on end

What about all the other countries I posted?

Still not "locking people in their homes" if you're literally allowed to go out...

Also, one of my coworkers lives in France (but works here in Germany). He never had any problems crossing the border or turning up to work
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teepan95 posted...

Still not "locking people in their homes" if you're literally allowed to go out...

Allowed to go out to buy some stuff and then immediately return home.

You cannot have a narrative where Sweden got a high death rate because there wasnt a strict lockdown while other nations did and then say that said nations didnt have a strict lockdown.

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BalanceLost posted...

Preferably none. There are however indications based on investigations done by IVO (The Inspection Authority of Nursing and Care) that the death rate would be about the same even with a lockdown due to the already exisiting flaws in our elderly care in several municipalities.

somehow I find this hard to believe

BalanceLost posted...

I have a question for you guys out of curiosity. The Government could not legally implement the type of lockdown most Western countries have imposed since it is illegal according to the Constitution. We have a minority Government and they did ask Riksdagen for certain emergency powers but Riksdagen only allowed a watered down version which has now expired since the law came with a time limit. So lets say that the Government now were to want a lockdown - should they violate the Constitution? Riksdagen would then have the PM removed from office though.

there are ways of dealing with this without going into full lockdown. and even full lockdown does not mean that people are actually restricted from leaving their home

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What if I told you most of East Asia was able to avoid shutting their economy down and didn't have thousands die? I feel like everyone is arguing over whether to let people die or ruin their economy when a whole section of the world figured out how to not do either.

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BalanceLost posted...

teepan95 posted...

Still not "locking people in their homes" if you're literally allowed to go out...

Allowed to go out to buy some stuff and then immediately return home.

You cannot have a narrative where Sweden got a high death rate because there wasnt a strict lockdown while other nations did and then say that said nations didnt have a strict lockdown.

Alright, fine, I admit I was wrong about the other countries.

We ourselves still managed it though. And I find it hard to believe your healthcare system could be much worse/better than ours

As for the economy, I'll look for a source, but the latest figures I read stated that the German economy should reach pre-Coronavirus levels by 2021 at the latest

Found the link. It's a bit old, granted, but the conditions it laid out (easing of restrictions continues) have so far been fulfilled

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-poised-for-big-economic-recovery-ifo/a-53595337
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BalanceLost posted...

That is the economic article which got posted in the previous topic I mentioned and the economic parts got debunked in that topic and this newer analysis just backs up that the New York Times peddled inaccur

They NY times isn't the only one coming to that conclusion
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sweden-didnt-impose-a-lockdown-its-economy-is-just-as-bad-as-its-neighbors-who-did-2020-06-25
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/07/20/sweden-coronavirus-covid-19-economic-pain-black-pkg-intl-hnk-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/coronavirus-intl/

I don't doubt that Sweden's failure to protect it's own people had some mitigating effect on the hit it took to it's economic activity in the early months of the pandmeic. The problem in dispute is that they somehow spared themselves from being effected economically by a global pandemic and whether that response has actually promoted positive public health outcomes, and the answer to both those questions is a fat resounding no.

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this is assuming the US actually shut down lol and I know the UK recent opened pubs which seemed pretty strict. Why not look at countries such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and etc. Why didnt Belarus economy grow then?

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Glad to see that article be debunked

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ssjevot posted...

What if I told you most of East Asia was able to avoid shutting their economy down and didn't have thousands die? I feel like everyone is arguing over whether to let people die or ruin their economy when a whole section of the world figured out how to not do either.

I agree that the West got things to learn from Japan and South Korea on these matters.

teepan95 posted...

Alright, fine, I admit I was wrong about the other countries.

We ourselves still managed it though. And I find it hard to believe your healthcare system could be much worse/better than ours

As for the economy, I'll look for a source, but the latest figures I read stated that the German economy should reach pre-Coronavirus levels by 2021 at the latest

Found the link. It's a bit old, granted, but the conditions it laid out (easing of restrictions continues) have so far been fulfilled

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-poised-for-big-economic-recovery-ifo/a-53595337

Yeah Germany has done well overall.

Do you mean healthcare or elderly care? Sweden and Germany both got low death rates in hospitals. About equally good I think.
Swedish elderly care has however been called an ttestupa (old saying for getting rid of your elderly) since long before the pandemic.

Most of Europe is not looking at such a strong recovery though, sadly. Could this economic comeback for Germany rely on the rescue package the leaders of the EU-nations agreed on yesterday? Germany sided with France, the South and the East on generous grants rather than only loans (the rest of the West and North wanted the fund to be loans).

Frolex posted...

They NY times isn't the only one coming to that conclusion
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sweden-didnt-impose-a-lockdown-its-economy-is-just-as-bad-as-its-neighbors-who-did-2020-06-25
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/07/20/sweden-coronavirus-covid-19-economic-pain-black-pkg-intl-hnk-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/coronavirus-intl/

I don't doubt that Sweden's failure to protect it's own people had some mitigating effect on the hit it took to it's economic activity in the early months of the pandmeic. The problem in dispute is that they somehow spared themselves from being effected economically by a global pandemic and whether that response has actually promoted positive public health outcomes, and the answer to both those questions is a fat resounding no.

CNN video links dont work for me. Dunno if it is some region locking tied to my phone / phone company?

The MarketWatch link just compares us to Denmark just like the NYT link. Denmark and Sweden are both some of the least hit nations financially. Wonder why both articles only compare us and the Danes? And newer data show that our predicted GDP drop is smaller than predicted in June. No country is unharmed but there are differences in extent.

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BalanceLost posted...

Could this economic comeback for Germany rely on the rescue package the leaders of the EU-nations agreed on yesterday? Germany sided with France, the South and the East on generous grants rather than only loans (the rest of the West and North wanted the fund to be loans).

Incorrect, it's based on production

I made an own topic on this, if you're interested
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teepan95 posted...

Incorrect, it's based on production

I made an own topic on this, if you're interested

Yes please. These matters interest me.

Im curious why Merkel did abandon her long standing view on loans vs grants this time though. Has the debate in Germany revealed anything about that?

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Tag for later

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BalanceLost posted...

The MarketWatch link just compares us to Denmark just like the NYT link. Denmark and Sweden are both some of the least hit nations financially. Wonder why both articles only compare us and the Danes? And newer data show that our predicted GDP drop is smaller than predicted in June. No country is unharmed but there are differences in extent.

Like I already said, no doubting the possibility that leaving your citizens out to die will have a potential to mitigate the economic impacts of a pandemic in the immediate short term. The question is if prioritizing that mitigation over the health of your populace actually results in a positive public health strategy. Which it doesn't.

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Frolex posted...

Like I already said, no doubting the possibility that leaving your citizens out to die will have a potential to mitigate the economic impacts of a pandemic in the immediate short term. The question is if prioritizing that mitigation over the health of your populace actually results in a positive public health strategy. Which it doesn't.

The economic predictions now are of 2020 and the coming years so not just the closest point in time though. The road ahead and what it can look like is important for public health too in terms of available resources and the like.

Regarding the virus, Sweden has had a continuous decline in deaths since April. Number of patients in hospitals are also declining (more get discharged and fewer are coming in). There was an increase in positive (mild) cases at the end of May and start of June because of increased testing but the number of positive cases has since kept falling. Testing keeps going up and positive cases keeps going down.

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BalanceLost posted...

The economic predictions now are of 2020 and the coming years so not just the closest point in time though. The road ahead and what it can look like is important for public health too in terms of available resources and the like.

Regarding the virus, Sweden has had a continuous decline in deaths since April. Number of patients in hospitals are also declining (more get discharged and fewer are coming in). There was an increase in positive (mild) cases at the end of May and start of June because of increased testing but the number of positive cases has since kept falling. Testing keeps going up and positive cases keeps going down.

Sweden has been one of the slowest countries in stabilizing infection rates, and have experienced outsized levels of mortality and hospitalization through this pandemic. The fact that the haven't fucked up as badly as nations run by fascists is not a positive success story

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https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/corona-lockdown-weniger-stress-mehr-familie-16871774.html

Before Corona, 21 percent of employees regularly felt stressed, whereas during the crisis only 15 percent felt stressed, according to the study. More than one in two of those who now regularly work in the home office said they were more productive there than in the office, and two-thirds said they were now better able to combine work and family life. A similar number also rated the time saved by eliminating the need to commute to work as positive. The overwhelming majority would like to continue working from home at least partially after the crisis.

Seems like the lockdown had positive effects on health too...

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