[claudeganon]

I think Sweden’s strategy is on the bad end of the spectrum and Taiwan and South Korea’s on the great end. I don’t anticipate any more catastrophe for them than their relative peers in the bad response group, but they did do quite bad compared to liberal democracies in SE Asia. Taiwan has had 11 deaths and South Korea about 300. Sweden has about 4700.

[gizmo]

South Korea uses exceptionally privacy invasive types of tracking and tracing, so their approach is better described as "police state" than as "liberal democracy"

This coronavirus hasn't made in a big impact anywhere in SE Asia, even though countries responded in very different ways. This suggests that the virus doesn't take hold for a different reason, e.g. pre-existing immunity.

[claudeganon]

South Korea is not a “police state.” All of the same info is collected by advertising companies and 3-letter agencies in the US.

> This suggests that the virus doesn't take hold for a different reason, e.g. pre-existing immunity.

No, it suggests the variety of their responses were on the effective side of things, while Sweden’s was not. Taiwan’s VP is an epidemiologist who has guided their response from day one and should be credited for that work.

Maybe people are so hostile about Sweden because people keep insisting they be graded on a curve, contrary to the real success stories.

[gizmo]

So it's not bad because the US is doing it too? Or, maybe, the US doesn't respect the privacy of its residents either.

Taiwan started taking action before the first case had even been reported. And yes, they do deserve credit for that.

Sweden's response was also effective, given that the virus had already spread widely across Europe by the time the politicians woke up. There is some variation in the way cases/deaths are tracked between countries, but when you look at All Cause Mortality it's clear that Sweden is right in the middle of the pack, and they accomplished that without the massive externalities (both human and financial) of a lockdown. That's a success, but yes, Europe should have responded aggressively in Dec as Taiwan did.

[claudeganon]

Sweden cooperates with the US on all that surveillance, so you can’t really argue that they’re better relative to the US or South Korea. Arguably worse, because South Korea actually saved lives with it while Sweden got no pandemic-fighting benefit in return.

The South Korean and Swedish responses began at about the same time, so again, this seems like special pleading. South Korea has more direct exchange with China as well.

If your argument is that Europe overall hasn’t done a great job, and Sweden isn’t that far of a deviation from that performance, ok. But again, that’s not an accomplishment relative to the actually successful countries like Taiwan and South Korea. I don’t understand how having many times more deaths be considered “effective” relative to these countries? Again, they didn’t have any of the economic damage caused by lockdowns either.