Re: CV and mad panic behaviour
Reply #1520 –
Lods you could be right, it is possible they are being singled out, but then the comparisons are interesting.
So Spain and Italy (as an example) we know part of their high original death tolls can be attributed to underestimating the power of this disease to cause the chaos it has, they were hit earliest and I think any country hit in this way was going to suffer a similar fate.
The other thing about these countries is that besides sharing land borders with other continental countries, they have high numbers of immigrants coming through unchecked from Africa, which means there is no quarantine for many of these people and if they have the virus it is going through unchecked. Not only is it going through unchecked, but if one person on an overcrowded boat makes it to those lands undetected, then that entire boat will almost certainly be infected also. This creates a situation where each fresh boat has the potential to be another wave starter.
Sweden on the other hand shares a land border with Finland (7 day average 90) and Norway (7 day average 111) whilst maintaining a 7 day average currently of 298.
It does share a bridge with Denmark (7 day average 535), which Denmark have restricted entry to from Sweden, but Sweden has to my knowledge left open. Freight traffic is still open both ways.
Denmark being a continental (thought Nordic) country of course shares a land border with Germany (7 day average 1780).
The reason for bringing that all up is that with less migration to Scandinavian countries than continental countries, there is less unchecked travel through borders and less chance for the virus to spread. England should have less issues as they have the ability to restrict traffic (as we do), but being a "destination" country there are also more attempts at illegal entry and all the problems that come with that, especially as until mid August they had removed the 14 day quarantine between itself and France (which by the way is self-quarantine). Why the UK didn't go into harder lockdowns I really don't know they left themselves on the precipice of a huge outbreak by sitting in a middle ground and hoped it would die out. It seems quite idiotic when you think about how they brought it down from 5,000 a day to 500 (about our average here at out peak), but started to ease restrictions, in that time is has increased 10 fold.
With regards to a dozen countries having worst death tolls per million than Sweden, this is true.. but it's neighbours are all between 60-100 ranking for deaths per million and sitting 14th (12th if you remove countries of less than 100,000 population) is not really a glowing endorsement.
You are right though, I feel like Sweden is being specifically judged because they made the decision that the financial importance was greater than the importance of life. There is no doubt they could have reduced their death toll by at least 70%, or if human terms at least 4,000 lives were sacrificed in an attempt to let the rest of the country live their lives. When you make a decision like that, you need to come out a clear winner, which Sweden hasn't done and it has resulted to them considering lockdown measures..
The UK has clearly mishandled their crisis, they are a destination country for sure, but they had fair warning, whilst most people who had the virus upon hitting continental Europe will have likely passed the worst of it by the time they setup in the Calais region to try and cross to England, there will be a lot that have picked it up during their travels from the south of Europe up to Calais and I suspect these camps often have large numbers of infections due to the transient nature of the people passing through there. Still, they should have been able to control their case load much better than they have and I don't know why they have not locked down through each county with hard lockdowns and tried to grow from there.
So yes continental countries are suffering worse than Sweden, but it is still suffering worse than it to land border neighbours.
To be honest though, I would not want to be in any European country right now. Even Austria who, in my opinion, handled the first wave better than pretty well any other European country (along with maybe Norway) is suffering a lot at the moment. It is not surprising, it is a landlocked country with 8 borders and a number of those countries are exploding. Their deaths per million despite this are 87 (ranked 70th).
My brother lives in London. UK strategy is being dictated by BREXIT. they're trying not to inflict more damage to their economy because they have a very bleak outlook before covid19 hit and he seems to think things are about to really go pear shaped.
Topic: CV and mad panic behaviour (Read 438321 times)
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