XFool wrote:Ah. If it weren't for the bad news all the news would be good!
You can be flippant all you like, if you don't want to engage with the evidence.
But in terms of evaluating whether allowing the population of Sweden freedom to adapt their behaviour as they deem appropriate in light of the evidence, it would seem appropriate to omit the deaths caused by a direct government policy that determined whether or not to admit care home covid patients to hospital.
It wasn't the patients making that choice. Nor was it the patients' families. It was the official policy that led to that...
So it makes sense to omit these deaths when evaluating lockdowns vs no lockdowns; those deaths are clearly
not due to any absence of a mandatory lockdown strategy.
XFool wrote:Yet below, you think they "have it all wrong" and object to their "whining".
You misunderstand. I wasn't saying the scientists have their science wrong. I was saying they have their strategy of trying to convince the government wrong.
The government doesn't matter. What matters is how people behave.
The scientists can stop whining about the government not taking any notice, and simply go direct to the people - that's the people who they want to change their [the people's] behaviour.
We have freedom of speech in this country. The scientists can speak their mind to the public if they want.
The press certainly seems happy to report other scientists views, so it's not like they are being suppressed.
I suspect the issue is though, that not all scientists agree. But that in itself, I would argue, is also reason to let the public make up their own mind, rather than relying on a single person or small group of people (Boris, etc) trying to make a judgement.
XFool wrote: Do we really need a more Trump approach? Shoot the messenger - "Stop testing so much then there won't be so many cases"
Who said anything about needing the Trump approach - I
contrasted against the Trump approach.
The Swedish government didn't attempt to deny covid the way Trump did. They are in no way comparable. There was no 'false' news from the government in Sweden. The Swedish people were given the facts, and they were not downplayed. The swedish government gave the scientists center stage.
Quite the opposite of Trump.
Trumps strategy is a completely different strategy to what Sweden followed.
The two are in no way comparable.
Attempts to conflate the two, could be seen as trying to distract from the evidence from Sweden.
Much like trying to include deaths from care homes that had no relation to the lockdown / no lockdown policy outside of care homes.
There's an interesting article here, from early in the pandmic, that explores the issue of the different approach in Sweden..
"On the face of it little has shut down. But data suggests the vast majority of the [Swedish] population have taken to voluntary social distancing, which is the crux of Sweden's strategy to slow the spread of the virus.
Usage of public transport has dropped significantly, large numbers are working from home, and most refrained from travelling over the Easter weekend.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52395866 "
Certainly early on, people in Sweden were making the behavioural changes necessary, without the need for compulsion.
And a central tenet of the Swedish idea, was recognising early on, that the behavioural changes would likely need to last longer than the 12 weeks we were being told with the UK lockdown. And they figured that you would more likely get longer term respect for the behavioural changes needed, if you allow people to voluntarily make the changes, rather than force them - carrot rather than stick.