[jsjolen]

>[...] but quietly so they don't have to admit it's a change of course.

Where exactly does this come from? Sweden has no need to save face. We've been transparent and had open discussion from the beginning with the spoken assumption that we may, in fact, not be doing the right thing and that we may have to alter course as the situation changes.

The ones who need to save face are the ones which are committing to full lockdown right now. They're the ones who are making a big sacrifice and need to motivate it with the fact that "it's a necessity", seeing Sweden succeed otherwise would be a big blow to their egos and their personal sacrifices.

I will also say that voluntary compliance is still occurring here, which is notable both in what private companies are doing in adapting to the situation, and how the average person has changed their behaviour. This doesn't mean 100% compliance for everyone, which is unfortunate.

[davidw]

> The ones who need to save face are the ones which are committing to full lockdown right now.

That's quite the assertion. The very word quarantine comes to us from when there was a Republic of Venice. The notion of shutting things down in times of plague is an old one.

Yes, it's a very blunt instrument, and you'd hope we could do better these days - and some places like South Korea and Taiwan appear to be managing that - but locking things down works.

[jsjolen]

I'm not saying that because the lockdown has been a failure you need to save face. Is there something unclear in my reasoning from the rest of my comment that you'd like me to re-word?

[davidw]

Saving face refers to trying to recover from screwing something up. Perhaps it's possible that something will come to light showing that lockdowns were not the best way of handling things, but they're a very good default when you don't really know what's going on, but can't afford to wait for data. I would have used a different phrase.

[casefields]

Just like abortion or guns, Republicans vs Democrats, there are 2 chunks of people on opposite sides that have staked out their bunkers. They are now at war.

[jsjolen]

It is absolutely not the same, since Sweden may change their position because they are not inherently opposed by some inherent moral absolutism to do so.