I’ve always thought that historians will look back at this period and wonder how most of the world went mad and engaged in self-destructive and freedom destroying policies that had no proven health benefit.
Now the figures are coming in.
Israel’s PM Netanyahu is touting a 10% GDP contraction in the first half of 2020 as a good result.
Perhaps compared to the UK’s 22% contraction, France’s 19% contraction and Germany’s 12 % contraction it is.
But Sweden only contracted 8.5% and now has achieved herd immunity with almost zero daily deaths and very few infections.
The full year 2020 results will reveal the complete folly of lockdowns and restrictions.
This Israel professor calls it correctly.
What's even more, with the UK, the government decided to wipe about 5,500 deaths off the tally of those who sadly died whilst testing positive for coronavirus because the way the 4 countries measured it wasn't consistent. So how can anyone still believe the numbers being reported is beyond me.
To add to this, I saw a BBC bulletin yesterday on local TV where community police were encouraging playing football with the neighbourhood. They showed footage of people (including police officers) in close contact, making tackles and whatnot and expect everyone to keep 2 metres (or 1 metre+) apart from strangers... mixed messages or what? Lol
Could I ask where you're getting the data that they've achieved herd immunity in Sweeden?
I'm not for a second claiming this is an authoratitive source, but I am highlighting that this source paints a very different picture of the outcomes in Sweeden: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-covid-herd-immunity-sweden-materialize.html
I think the final paragraph is pretty important in the link above:
"The authors do say, however, that only once the pandemic and impact of measures taken are fully understood, after one or two years at least, can we begin fairly then to judge what was done correctly."
Your graph is misleading because it only shows the data until the beginning of August.
Sweden has had restrictions on large gatherings in place the whole time. The Finnish and Swedish economies have contracted to a similar extent despite Finland having tighter restrictions in place in the spring. Much of the low rates of infection in the Nordic countries can be explained by the fact that the people normally behave as if they were in what is mandated by lockdowns in the south of Europe. People maintain a much larger distance between each other than in the south. There was little in the way of touching, kissing or anything like that even before Covid-19. Three-generation households are very rare. Single-person households are more common than anywhere else. There is no liberal use of antibiotics in animal husbandry like in the US or many of the southern European countries like Italy or Spain, which makes the risk of contracting a secondary bacterial pulmonary infection in addition to Covid-19 induced pneumonia much less of a risk. Air quality is much better than particularly Northern Italy.
I made this post on 16 Aug 2020 so my graph was quite up to date.
While I appreciate you looking at my older posts, its a bit strange commenting on a 3 months old post that its data is out of date. :-)
Damn, I didn't notice I was responding to an old post! Sorry about calling your graph out of date, mate.
The rest of my comment is still valid, though.