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Comment by dingdongbing | Hacker News Reader

There is not a political component to this, we (Sweden) have probably the most objective and science based Health system in the world. For this reason we get criticized by other nations for not having lockdowns and not wearing masks, there is no indication that these actually work and they probably cause more harm than good. Our leaders have shown great competence to follow the science and not make a knee-jerk reaction to what France and America are doing.

If Moderna is clearly worse than Pfizer, then why shouldn't we stop it?

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Except your scientist(s) were wrong this time and killed 10 times more people by not implementing quick and mild restrictions and letting the disease spread. Sure, what US and France did was also different kind of wrong but it does not make you right. Only thing that has been life saving is very quick reaction that limits the spread at its infancy. Also of course quick vaccination.

>Except your scientist(s) were wrong this time and killed 10 times more people by not implementing quick and mild restrictions and letting the disease spread.

This is the dumbest hunk of shit I've ever heard. We have the exact same death rates and infection rates as the rest of Europe.

Maybe at the moment but not during spring 2020. Other Scandinavian and Baltic states did not do the mistakes Sweden did and their death rates were 10 times lower. Also see Greece vs Spain and Italy. Well, Italy and Spain did not have change because they were the first to get hit by COVID-19 but Sweden had plenty of time to not make mistakes.

But perhaps Sweden is better off than others. You have now less burden on social system and economic loss was perhaps a little smaller, not much but perhaps still worth the sacrifice.

Give me any country in Europe and I'll show you when their rates were 10 times higher. Corona hits mostly in waves, the only worthwhile numbers to compare are the totals over the entire pandemic, not a specific period. We certainly wouldn't "sacrifice" our citizens for the economy.

Yes, it hits in waves and every wave should be handled properly. It is pointless to compare totals. It is important to understand what can be done better and for that it makes sense to analyze each wave separately. Sweden miserably failed the first one and did not really care about others. Other Scandinavian and Baltic countries fared much better but could not continue to make perfect choices. Baltic is at the moment totally messed up by their poor vaccination rates.

But if you insist to compare totals, here is small list. Not really 10x difference but close.

Deaths per 100000 Sweden 144 Denmark 46 Finland 20 Norway 16

For sure, there are countries with even worse outcome. Still presenting Sweden as some kind of success story makes me sick.

Well you did surprise me, I didnt expect Finland and Norway to be so low. Although these along with Iceland are outliers in Europe to say the least and Sweden is well in the middle. The baltics is comparable to Sweden.

But the reason we have more deaths than our neighbours is not because of no lockdowns, Finland was also very lenient. A _massive_ proportion of all of our deaths were from the nursing homes. The thing we did really bad was to not have any way to check the workers in the nursing homes for covid, which they did in Norway I know for sure and very likely in Finland. Had we done that then we likely would have the same as our neighbours, but don't pin it on lockdowns, they DON'T work.

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