[serial_dev]

> we can all see that some governments responded well and others did not.

Can we, though? We are not even half time yet (most likely). How are we going to judge a government in the beginning of a pandemic as if the pandemic was already over? Maybe what looks like a poor strategy now will turn out to be the best later. Same true for the economic bailouts, some countries went harder than others, and it's not yet clear which will work better.

There are some anomalies that's difficult to explain (Sweden, for example). Sure, we can retrofit some model, and imagine we have it all figured out, but could you have predicted it correctly?

[jacobolus]

What is the anomaly? Sweden has done substantially worse than all of its neighbors in both lives/health and economic impact. Which was exactly what many people predicted.

[harambae]

It's not clear Sweden has done substantially worse than its neighbors [0] and regardless we're not through this and different countries and counting a number of things differently.

5 years from now when we look at the death certificates from nations with reliable death certificate records, we might have a better idea.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-21/sweden...