elbows
Well-Known Member
On paper there were a bunch of reasons that Sweden should have had built in advantages compared to plenty of other nations. For example they have a low proportion of intergenerational households, and a higher proportion of people that live alone. Combine those sorts of things with good fortune in terms of how much initial seeding of the virus there was, and the burden of disease should be much smaller than the likes of the UK, Italy etc. Managing to end up comparable to some countries that did extremely badly, that did not have those structural advantages, in the first wave is a sign of failure. A failure to make the most of those advantages in order to significantly reduce death.
There are a bunch of reasons why things go in waves, with waves that have a peak and an endpoint even if the brakes are never applied to a degree sufficient to stop things in their tracks. And it is certainly true that applying the brakes more gently in ways that stop short of full lockdowns still has some impact. Including the natural braking that stems from people responding to mood music and the obvious threat, and changing their behaviour in response to circumstances. So I dont think Sweden had no brakes at all, but they made cold calculations and miscalculations that squandered their advantages, or rather used up that advantage serving a certain sort of policy and economic agenda rather than using it solely to minimise death. Thats a big part of why its considered a scandal there, and why many apologies for this have already been issued later in the pandemic. There is a period of soul-searching there which may not be put in quite the same terms as I am doing now, but is still quite a bit different to how the UK seeks to dress up its own dismal failures.
Those somewhat curtailed waves still dont go as far in terms of trajectory reduction as we saw in countries that applied the brakes firmly at an early stage before exponential growth reached giddy heights at all. There are examples of countries that slammed the brakes on early and left them in place for sufficient time, and thus ended up with a much, much smaller first wave. Some of the countries that managed that feat the first time did not manage to do it with such good timing and strength the second time. And some achieved this feat the first time more through luck than judgement, or due to a mix of advantageous factors that are possible to guess, and factors that are still poorly understood, eg Germany. As far as I know the jury is out on exactly why Germany did so well the first time, but whatever the factors that gave them the chance to do that, they were able to then make use of it to bring in appropriate policies on top before it was too late to avoid joining the list of appauling pandemic nations in the first wave. Germany managed that in the first wave, but not the second time around. And that detail certainly needs to be acknowledged if daring to compare the likes of Sweden to Germany - look at the first wave, Sweden cannot be compared to Germany in that wave, the suspicion is that Sweden should have been rather well placed to avoid the horrific numbers and should have done so much better. Instead their first wave trend resembled a cross between those shit show countries like the UK who had few built in advantages and were late to brake but then eventually did so quite strongly, and what we saw in the second waves in countries with less assumed advantages than Sweden, that then applied brakes more hesitantly and with insufficient strength the second time around. Swedens trajectory also underwent a change part way through their second wave, and this might be linked with some changes to their policies and level of government intervention that took place there during that wave. As for the UK, timing of our Delta wave and the weak braking throughout that wave and the following Omicron wave rather shows up as a gradual increases in death seen over a longer period of time, in contrast to a bunch of other countries whose deaths only started rising notably again later.
I think the countries that managed to apply the brakes with the correct timing on more than one occasion did so because of a combination of factors that made them consider it more feasible for them to do so, but also because of a certain sense of what their priorities should be. That list of successful, decent countries in the pre-vaccine waves isnt huge, but its existence brings shame to those whose priorities consistently pointed in another direction, as does the small list of those who went even further via 'zero covid' policies. Germany might be an example of a country that used their first wave success in order to reach a different sense of 'balance' and 'priorities' in the second wave, not caring to keep the burden so low the second time around.
Here is the same graph I posted earlier but with less countries, in order to make the first and second wave burdens and trajectories easier to see.
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