What I can't help but posting

Edit: The blog post that made me write this is now translated to English: Multipale errors in the New York times article about Sweden's corona strategy.

My part of the world, Västerbotten, Sweden, has three hospital with ICU units. Because of the pandemic they increased the numbers of ICU beds to 50. Better safe than sorry. How many Covid-patients are in those 50 ICU beds now? Zero! How much higher is the general mortality in Västerbotten this year than an average year? Actually it’s lower this year, than average. The last is likely 100% because we are lucky. But it’s still Sweden, the country that international media calls disaster, fiasco, failure, scandal … 

 

One of the youtubers I used to follow back in the days, one time said he never was as pro-GMO as when he saw some anti-gmo article using bad data and lies. I recognize myself in that. That’s what polarization do with me, and I assume us. It’s also think polarization makes us emotional, when it comes to decisions that should be based on reason, not emotions. Just like the youtuber and gmo, I now is very pro-Sweden's novel corona strategi, since New York times just published an article, using bad data and lies to critzise Sweden.   

 

Social media of course makes polarization worse. On facebook I can get links to site I never heard on before, unherd.com, inproportion2.com, because those are the sites that can support the Swedish approach. Who is Kim Iversen? I don’t know, and I never watched her video, but for a while I had her video with the title “Don't be fooled, Sweden's covid-19 response was a success” in my “watch later” list on youtube. 

 

This might actually be one time when the truth is somewhere between the two extremes. Success? How lose is your definition of "success". At best  it is too early to tell and it can be different between different regions. But calling the respons disaster, fiasco, scandal, or a crackpot theory like the New York time journalist did. Bullshit. Treating this as an international tournament, only focusing on one variable: virus spreading, is also bullshit. 

 

Not our streets: