How Well is Sweden's CoVid-19 Strategy Working?

Turns out the curve is headed into low-Earth orbit!

The supposed Swedish herd immunity model has been touted lately as the way to go for the good old USA. Good old conspiracy theorists say it's best to go ahead and let everyone get it right away. Okay, I'm sorry but the "let everyone who's gonna die, go ahead and die" strategy doesn't much appeal to me - a 66 year-old diabetic with vicious arthritis. What's the advantage in that?  Decrease the surplus population?  How very Dickensian! I thought they said Obamacare wasn't going to do death panels. The herd immunity strategy doesn't work too well for those of us in the kill zone.

Meanwhile, the Swedish government flatly denies they are pushing any sort of herd immunity coronavirus strategy. I'm not sure they even have a coronavirus strategy. Perhaps they are hoping to wipe out some of those immigrant ghetto "no go" zones their police like to stay out of. I suppose if you want to thin out the immigrants, the infirm and the old people, it would certainly make national healthcare more affordable for the Swedish taxpayers who are left alive.

As it turns out, despite all the crowing by the media and assorted conspiracy theorists (most of whom are young and healthy and not likely to die from the virus), things are not going well in Sweden. So far their mortality rate is up around 12%*. That works out to be  4 times the worst predicted death rate in the USA. Per capita they have a whole lot more infections than the United States. Sweden is now the sixth worst hit nation on the planet so far. Interestingly all of the worst hit places (per capita) are in Western Europe except for China which is shaving their death totals quite shamelessly and probably have far more fatalities than they are admitting. Of course, since China has eased off the two child maximum laws, they are now facing a glut of old people, sick people and disabled people, which by sheer coincidence are the favorite targets for CoVid-19. I'm not saying they are deliberately killing people who are no longer useful, but even socialist here are saying never to "let a crisis go to waste". 

Hooray for socialized medicine! 

 

I'm just saying
 

© 2020 by Tom King*Current Swedish infection and death rate by CoVid-19.

Where are the Gideons when we need them.....

(c) 2013 by Tom King

 The Republicans have forgotten how to speak clearly and how to tell stories that clarify issues.  Check out this short piece by Ronald Reagan more than a half century ago.  And he was still a Democrat at the time!!!

"A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won't decide when they're in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine. " 

- Ronald Reagan

I have to wonder whether, in these troubled times, perhaps we have been denied a Gideon, a champion to stand in the breach and to defend our liberties and our the nation, because we've wasted so many of the ones we've already been sent. A little prayer from all of us about now would not go amiss I'm thinking.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King