Church of Sweden versus Church of England branch of the Church of Shutdown

by philg

“Sweden’s success shows the true cost of our arrogant, failed establishment” (Telegraph, August 12, sadly paywalled, by Allister Heath, the editor of the sister Sunday Telegraph):

Shocking incompetence has unnecessarily wiped billions of pounds from the UK economy

So now we know: Sweden got it largely right, and the British establishment catastrophically wrong. Anders Tegnell, Stockholm’s epidemiologist-king, has pulled off a remarkable triple whammy: far fewer deaths per capita than Britain, a maintenance of basic freedoms and opportunities, including schooling, and, most strikingly, a recession less than half as severe as our own.

Our arrogant quangocrats and state “experts” should hang their heads in shame: their reaction to coronavirus was one of the greatest public policy blunders in modern history, more severe even than Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial crisis, Suez or the ERM fiasco. Millions will lose their jobs when furlough ends; tens of thousands of small businesses are failing; schooling is in chaos, with A-level grades all over the place; vast numbers are likely to die from untreated or undetected illnesses; and we have seen the first exodus of foreigners in years, with the labour market survey suggesting a decline in non-UK born adults.

Tegnell is one of the few genuine heroes of this crisis: he identified the correct trade-offs.

Good news: Britain has no “systemic racism”; bad news: it does have “systemic incompetence”.

This is a catastrophically high price tag for the British state’s systemic incompetence, the uselessness of Public Health England, the deep, structural failings of the NHS, the influence of modelers rather than proper scientists, the complacency, the delusion, the refusal to acknowledge that the quality of the British state and bureaucracy are abysmally poor.

The author notes that “panic and hysteria were the only possible outcome.”

(Coronavirus hasn’t been a problem for people who live on alimony and/or child support, but the article describes “cancelled weddings” and therefore a delay in being able to file a divorce lawsuit in one of the world’s most lucrative jurisdictions. (see “International Divorce, Custody, and Child Support Systems” for how profitable a short-term marriage in the U.K. can be).)

Tough to imagine an editorial this harsh in a major U.S. paper! The NYT might publish something that attacks Donald Trump, but not an attack like this on the competence of the federal and state governments!

The article is paywalled, but I uploaded a PDF that a reader graciously created.

What are the numbers? The U.K. has a higher death rate than Sweden or the U.S., but it would appear that the U.K. and the U.S. will converge. In other words, both panic-stricken and shut-down-for-months countries will end up with more deaths per capita than never-shut Sweden. The U.K. line is the top of the chart below.

The Friday W.H.O. report shows Sweden with 2 deaths from/with Covid-19. Here in Maskachusetts, with a smaller population, there were 14. With a fully-masked population that is 4X Sweden’s, California is suffering 150-200 Covid-19-tagged deaths per day.

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13 thoughts on “Church of Sweden versus Church of England branch of the Church of Shutdown”

  1. Here in the United States, where Sweden is the world’s red-headed stepchild, few people ever mention this (from the article): “A big part of Sweden’s recession was caused by a slump in demand for its exports from its fully locked-down neighbours.”

    Of course it was. Even the IMF notes that falling external demand is one of the biggest drags on the Swedish economy. That doesn’t stop the rest of the world from condemning Sweden for not being as economically and socially sick as they are! Those evil Swedes. We should nuke them. 😉

    What I don’t see anywhere in the cards is the path for Britain to reopen its society and rebuild their economy. Here are their stats:

    https://covid19-projections.com/united-kingdom

    At what point does Britain start to turn around? Their death and infection rates are so low that almost any outbreak will cause the numbers to double, which will necessitate a new wave of panic. Moreover, the IHME models show Britain entering an asymptotic crisis of death and destruction worse than anything they’ve seen, beginning in November:

    https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

    How does a society like Britain’s ever get out of lockdown, once it has been imposed, with models showing that the worst is yet to come? More importantly, how do you advocate for liberalizing and reopening an economy where “socialist decline” is viewed as a feature, not a bug?

  4. @Beliavsky – that’s awesome! Thanks! I subscribed to WSJ a while ago but they kept losing my login credentials – meaning they wouldn’t let me store my login and password in my browser. Typically I generate individual random passwords which I don’t remember and let the browser store for me. Those bastards are WSJ don’t let it work. Then when I wanted to cancel they said to call a customer service phone. Why not allow cancellation online? The trick I found out: change your address to anywhere in California (I used Apple’s HQ address in Cupertino), and then you can cancel. California has a law that requires it to be easy to cancel subscriptions online! Between the login troubles and the realization that my eyeballs are not always reading the WSJ enough to justify the costs, I gave up. Thanks a lot for sharing – will be useful for the odd article I am interested in!

  6. actual data science question regarding https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/3yf8-kanr .

    What am I supposed to do with all the “Suppressed (counts 1-9)” data holes that come up with causes of death? They are bundled into the total death counts, but the suppression makes closer analysis of cause of death impossible for smaller states.

    I understand that this data is suppressed for privacy reasons, but it poses a problem for analysis.

    • @J.P, there will be “positive tests” for who knows how long, maybe for ever. So what are we to do, lockup everyone till when we have zero “positive” tests? Wait for a vaccine and force everyone to take it? Or do you have some other ideas?

      My idea on how to combat Covid-19 is to double down on what we are already told to do when we get the cold / flu: stay home away from everyone including family members, wash your hands often and keep healthy by eating right and resting — in few weeks, it will pass. If you know your immune system is weak because of preexisting condition or age, look after yourself and lock yourself away from others.

      Media reports of “positive” tests is nothing but sensational reporting and a scare tactic that all it does is dig us further into the rabbit hole.

      Infection != Death

    • J: I think it is fair to say that by the SWEDISH philosophy, universities should open. Most of the people who are at universities are young and the people who attend universities would probably eventually get infected by coronavirus, if not already infected, at a restaurant or gym or party or whatever.

      How about under the AMERICAN value system, in which the only things that matter are Covid-19 infection and death rates AND in which we believe that shutdown can prevent, not merely delay, infection? I think under this value system, universities should stay closed until there is a vaccine (even if that takes 10 years) or until the virus manages to work its way through the cowering-in-place population.

      Angela Merkel said that 60-70 percent of Germans would be infected (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/angela-merkel-most-people-will-get-the-coronavirus.html ). A lot of American epidemiologists and politicians said that back in February/March as well. People didn’t like this prospect and they wanted to believe that humans could be in charge. So now we are told that we get to choose what percent of the population will eventually be infected. It just takes some sacrifice and effort.

      Since the people in power are old and won’t be attending universities or university parties, it is an easy call to decide that students should sacrifice by being stuck in front of their computers while the on-campus experience is essentially eliminated.

  8. I thought this was about the actual C of E and the Swedish Lutheran Church. One of the biggest features, at least for Christians, of the lockdown was the interdict or closure of all churches on Easter and Pentecost. My own parish church just recently re-opened, but with so much hygene theater that its just not worth trying to attend a service, even if I wasn’t upset with the church leadership for not at least trying to hold outdoor services. I wonder if religious services continued as normal in Sweden.

    • Ed: The Swedes banned gatherings of more than 50 people. So as long as a church isn’t too popular, the services continued as before. (Unlike in the U.S., the Swedish rules are applicable to all kinds of gatherings. So a BLM protest does not get different treatment than a mosque.)

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