Local patriotism

Mom pointed out that two good things about this town might be related. One we have low spread of the novel coronavirus. Two, we are the largest town in Sweden without what the police calls “vulnerable areas”, or even “particularly vulnerable areas”. If you get your news from RT or that site on B who’s name I never will learn, that’s the neighborhoods they call: “no go zones”. The problem with a name like that is that someone like me might say: “While I admit it was a long time since I visit any of those, I have the last years met quite a lot of persons who lives or works in those areas, and none of them has been lynched for being Swedish - not even once”. The problem with that is that smart people might say something like this: “The important thing isn’t to debate what name we should call whose neighborhoods, the important thing is to debate how we can improve those neighborhoods. Most people living there don’t like having that much crime around them.”

Anyway, what mom said simply was that the fact we don’t have any poor neighborhood with high overcrowding might have helped us keep the covid-19 infections down. Now that can not be the only explanation, there are smaller towns without vulnerable areas, that have higher mortality than us. Maybe we’re just lucky.

Then, for what it’s worth, our largest morning paper - that in it’s editorial articles has been very “hawkish” against the pandemic and pro draconian laws - reported that Sweden last year had one of the lowest excess mortality in Europe. So having one of the lowest infection rates in Sweden, must also mean among the lowest in Europe. We’re so lucky.

Ps. about the last, I have no problem adding the caveat that the data might not be 100% correct. And sure the pandemic has lead to much suffering here, it's however looks like many places with harsher laws are doing even wrose.