A Stockholm Idyll

Remember those halcyon days of yore when citizens could walk down the sidewalks freely, bumping shoulders with each other and chatting with neighbors and friends?

Remember when people could gather in bars or sit at the outdoor tables of street cafés?

Ah, those were the days! I’m old enough to remember such times…

And they’re still doing those things in Sweden. The country is under enormous international pressure to cave in to the raging epidemic of hysteria and impose a general lockdown. So far the Swedish government has resisted — and, as far as I know, it is the only Western nation to do so.

As a matter of interest, the comparative statistics for Sweden — recorded data, not projections — don’t indicate that it is experiencing significantly worse effects from the coronavirus than countries under full lockdown. See this article from Power Line for some of the data.

Ullis News took a brief tour of Stockholm today to give us a glimpse of how normal life can continue even during the coronavirus pandemic. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

11 thoughts on “A Stockholm Idyll

  1. [This is material that I deprecate]. The reason that Sweden does not issue the shelter in place advice/mandate is that the muslim ghettos would erupt in defiance and might even destroy the civic peace. There numbers are large and they believe that they are immune.
    The coronavirus is not the Spanish flu – Thank G-d! But, it is not flu either. The kung flu is already destabilizing Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Lebonan. It is still raging in China. It is hit Italy and Spain especially hard. This is a mean MF and it needs to be handled carefully.
    But, that BS that Sweden is not calling for sheltering in place because it is enlightened, or it knows better, or whatever is a lie. They do not want to set off the relatively huge muzzie population as is seen in Germany, France, Italy, etc.

    • That may be why they are not shutting down, but their numbers will be a critical cross-check on whether or not shut downs are the right strategy. Ultimately hand washing, masks and extra care at seniors facilities might do enough to reduce numbers without the major shut downs. How will we even know, unless some countries follow a different approach? I say, watch carefully what happens in Sweden.

      • I agree 100%, we need to study the same virus under different conditions, from Stockholm to Guayaquil.

  2. While the Swedish response likely has more to do with a lack of preparedness or just sheer laziness and incompetence than any actual planned outcome, it does demonstrate how shutting down the economy here in the US was not neccessary for medical reasons to the degree in which it has caused far more harm economically than it has prevented medically.

    If I had to guess, the shuttering of the entire US economy has more to do with allowing a reset in a number of areas of economic and political realms. One of these specifically is the end of our reliance on China to manufacture cheap, poor quality goods while allowing the Chinese communist government and unscrupulous American CEOs and boards of directors to profit from the destruction of American manufacturing capability. This destructive shuttering of our economy also has destroyed supply chain relationships around the world with the result that after the pandemic, many manufacturing jobs will be relocated back into the US, and new jobs will be created in warehousing, raw material production, and specifically for strategic reasons, pharmaceutical production and medical supplies.

    Another reason that I see this shutdown as deliberate is in allowing drastic reforms of the medical amd insurance industry with regards to portability of medical coverage, price reforms, and likely even some form of socialized medicine. All this is being allowed through the cover of the medical authorities, who have provided plausible deniability to the Trump administration as they make these drastic changes.

  3. What racist / Islamophobic rubbish. There has been no Islamic uprising in the UK.
    A large Asian presence in our Health and caring services, means we owe them a debt of gratitude, rather than your kind of hateful ill ignorant rant.

    • I really don’t know enough about the situation in Sweden to comment, Reg.

      A few minutes ago (8pm Thursday), I heard people clapping, cheering and banging pans, to salute the workers in Britain’s National Health Service, for the third week in a row. I don’t know who began this, but I find it quite moving. God knows, as a 72-year-old male who’s on immune suppressants, and has recently had a letter from the NHS telling me to self-isolate, I may need their services, and the prognosis wouldn’t be good. Yet my (non-cohabiting) partner of five years will be here tomorrow to spend the weekend, as I did a week ago at hers.

      Government advice is that one of us should move in with the other for the duration, but one would still have to go back for mail, prescriptions etc. In theory, I’m entitled to get my food delivered, but how soon? So I have to go to the supermarket or starve, and it’s harder to maintain “social distancing” there than on the little-used (indeed near-empty) trains (not tubes) we use from north to south London. Are we being irresponsible or self-indulgent? Well, at our ages (she’s older), who knows how long we’ve got together anyway? We use masks and latex gloves, while most of the folk I see on public transport and in shops don’t.

    • That’s a cheerful thought, Gary; I recall that after the nuclear apocalypse, Australia had a few weeks’ grace before the radiation reached it; in the last-ever Australian Grand Prix, drivers were deliberately crashing their cars.

  4. »As a matter of interest, the comparative statistics for Sweden — recorded data, not projections — don’t indicate that it is experiencing significantly worse effects from the coronavirus than countries under full lockdown.«

    Today Sweden reported almost 700 dead with the virus —- at a total population of about 10 million. That’s a considerable higher ratio than e.g. Germany reports. But may be there the virus is only slowed down; nobody knows what the final ratios will be. And then there are the consequnces of a lockdown.

  5. The lull before the storm. Everyone is a ticking timer ready and set. How could it be any other way? No wait…..

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