Sweden’s Economy Crashed Anyway

I can already hear it now.

The lockdown, not the virus, has destroyed the economy.

Wall Street Journal:

“MOTALA, Sweden—While much of Europe and the U.S. have endured strict government-imposed lockdowns, Josefine Sandblom has been free to savor the Scandinavian spring and lounge in restaurants in her hometown here, a popular lakeside vacation destination.

But Ms. Sandblom, like many Swedes, has chosen not to. She keeps 6 feet away from colleagues in the factory where she works and stays home the rest of the time. She takes a dim view of the young people crowding bars in the capital, Stockholm.

“They are stupid,” the 41-year-old Ms. Sandblom said. “Not here in Motala. We like each other here.” …

All of that is contributing to what Sweden’s government estimates will be a 6% contraction in domestic consumption this year. Combined with a forecast 10% drop in exports, Swedish authorities predict, the result will be a 7% decline in overall 2020 economic output. The eurozone economy as a whole is projected to contract by about 8% this year, according to a European Commission estimate. …”

This is a fantasy of the reopeners.

Even if everything reopened right now, according to a Bitcoin Prime legitiem report, the economy would still crash like it has in Sweden, which as we have been told a million times is the model which we should have gone with to handle the virus. The overwhelming majority of people will alter their behavior to avoid spreading the virus. It was always a billionaire’s fantasy that the public would be willing to just “ride out” something like this.

New York Times:

“Two months after the coronavirus shuttered much of the United States economy, the outbreak’s impact — on jobs, health care, food access and much more — is growing only more severe, according to a growing body of polling and social science data.

But here’s what else the polls are telling us: Americans are generally uninterested in returning to normal, and they tend to believe federal health experts, who continue to warn against a swift reopening of the economy.

President Trump said this week that he was eager “to get our country open again,” adding, “People want to go back, and you’re going to have a problem if you don’t do it.”

But more than two-thirds of respondents said in a Pew Research Center poll out Thursday that they were more concerned that state governments would reopen their economies too quickly than that they might take too long — roughly on par with past responses to the same question. …”

Reopeners are minority.

Over half the population isn’t going to resume their normal lives until the public health threat is addressed. So you can reopen malls and movie theaters but isn’t going to make much of a difference. There is still a nasty virus infecting people and it is clear to everyone now that it isn’t the flu. You can be John Galt sitting by yourself in an empty reopened movie theater.

Pew:

“As Americans continue to give the news media a solid grade overall for coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage who say journalists have exaggerated the risks of the outbreak has decreased notably in recent weeks, according to survey data from Pew Research Center’s Election News Pathway project.

Among U.S. adults surveyed from April 20-26, 69% say the news media have covered the outbreak very well or somewhat well, a number that is virtually unchanged from the 70% of respondents who said the same thing in a survey conducted from March 10-16.

But as the toll from the coronavirus has grown dramatically over time, there has been movement in the share of Americans who say the news media have greatly or slightly exaggerated the risks it poses – with that percentage dropping from 62% in March to 48% in April. That includes a decline in the portion saying the media have greatly exaggerated the risks, from 37% to 24%. At the same time, the portion of respondents who say the media have gotten the COVID-19 risks about right grew by 9 percentage points – from 30% to 39%. …”

As the death toll has grown, it is “just the flu, bro” is perceived as more and more absurd and out of touch with each passing day. It is on its way to joining “Iraq is going to be a cakewalk.” The threat posed by the virus actually wasn’t exaggerated. This was a pretty big deal.

In late March and April, the virus was also a New York and New Jersey problem that the rest of the country watched on television. Not anymore. We’re well on the way to the Coronavirus Confederacy as new infections and deaths shift from the East Coast to Middle America.

National Review:

“As of this writing, Sweden has 24,623 cases of coronavirus and 3,040 deaths. Sweden has 2,438 cases per million people and 301 deaths per million people. The United States has 3,906 cases per million people . . . but only 232 deaths per million people. …

Sweden has about 10 million people. Much like the United States, Sweden is having serious outbreaks of the virus in nursing homes, and complaints about insufficient access to personal protective equipment. Much like the United States, their rate of testing is increasing much less quickly than their leaders wanted.

When you compare populations, other key differences become clearer. Sweden has about 4 million citizens over the age of 60; the United States has about 150 million. With 7.6 million people living in urban areas, Sweden ranks 57th in the world in that metric. We rank third with almost 240 million. Neither of our population densities is particularly high by world standards, but ours is a little higher. …

Perhaps most importantly, Sweden is literally the least-obese country in the world, just 12 percent. We rank 16th, with 33 percent of our population being obese. (Some put the percentage of obese Americans closer to 40 percent.) …”

There is nothing about deaths from the virus in Sweden, particularly in Stockholm, which suggests that the virus isn’t really that bad. The deaths that have occurred there are what we would expect given its age and health profile and not anywhere close to the flu.

[OC] Mortality in Sweden each day compared to previous 6 years (1st Jan – 26th April) from r/dataisbeautiful

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

11 Comments

  1. The media has SENSATIONALIZED the outbreak.

    “Lookie, lookie , dead here , dead there . oh family lost dad, lost mom” panic, panic etc.

    Dr. John Campbell is far superior.
    Take vit D, wash hands thoroughly, wear a mask in public, social distance, isolate.

    Does any media show how to make chlorinated water, the right proportions ? Do they show how to make hypochlorous acid ? Do they tell ppl to carry a spray bottle of such ?

    What does the trashy obsolete media do ?

  2. So I live in Sweden. You’re correct about the economic impact, but I don’t think that our deaths are that bad. Euromomo is a website comparing excess deaths in various European countries and Sweden has about +25% excess mortality in early April. Italy and others have 150% or more.

    Also, looking at deaths or case loads *at this stage* is pretty meaningless. Most people are unaware that we don’t have a single coronavirus vaccine in the world. I’m not talking about COVID-19. I’m talking about the whole family of coronaviruses. I wouldn’t put much hope in getting a vaccine out quickly. Are countries that locked down early going to to keep locking down for months, years? That isn’t sustainable.

    Sweden has done plenty of social distancing, but we’ve done so without Orwellian measures. Ultimately, I think it is better to choose a sustainable strategy that may be needed to be kept for a year or more. My own view is that outside of a few isolated islands like Iceland or New Zealand, everyone is likely to end up with a similar death toll in the end. Lockdown countries just pushed that timeline ahead of them.

    P:S. love your work, and I’ve been a longtime reader. It’s important for Europeans/Whites across the world to stick together.

    • Thanks for the comment.

      It is ways nice to hear from those who don’t regularly post in the comments.

      From what I understand, cell phone data in Sweden and Tennessee shows there isn’t much difference between some of our lockdown states and Sweden. Swedes are doing the social distancing voluntarily.

    • Sweden is an exception.
      The Whites of Sweden practice a high level of hygiene, like most Nordics.

      Eat pizza with a knife and fork, sheeez.

  3. The World should listen. I think Dr. Michael Hill and others making mention of “Biblical Plagues” is something that more people should think about. God controls everything and he punishes all. He makes it rain on the just and the unjust. Coronavirus is a perfect example of that. It came from China, it came from a US Biological Weapons, it came from an open meat market, and some place else. It was done by the US as a way of getting into a War with China, Iran, and others and getting us into World War III. That World War III would end in a Nuclear War. All of it (and how Covid-19 really happened) really doesn’t matter because God is using Covid-19 as a weapon of punishment on the entire World. He’s fed up with all the sin and wickedness.God doesn’t wait around until the economy is bad…..his justice come regardless and he picked the perfect time for his wrath on the World. The so called “US Economy” is better than ever. LOL Yea and I bet the economy during the days of Noah was great. The same goes for the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. When God is done he’s done with it. We’re living in one of those times in history now. All countries and people of Faith should be 100% in Prayer and Repentance. He will heal our lands but not until we restore our Faith and follow his Word. Deo Vindice !

    • Your god is evil. Supposedly it made everything and knows everything. It knew man would fall for its trick and sin…then it punishes man for something it knew he would do.

    • Sorry, Brian, but God is not responsible for this mess. God is not punishing America. God is not trying to terrorize people into good behavior just because He refuses to shield people from the consequences of bat-shit crazy stupid decisions.

      This coronavirus epidemic was MADE IN THE USA when Billionaires in Need decided that middle class Americans could do with a lot less and if not, it sucks to be them. Walmart forced the Levi Plant in San Antonio, Texas, a non-union “right to work” state to move their operations to China or they would boycott their product.

      To maximize their profits, corporate leaders, with the enthusiastic support of their stock holders, decided that moving ALL of this country’s manufacturing base to the epicenter of every documented pandemic since the Bubonic Plague was an acceptable risk.

      Yeah this thing was probably created in a lab. I think it originated in an American or Canadian Lab and the Chinese stole some samples to work on in Wuhan and it got loose when greedy technicians sold lab animals to wet markets for consumption.

      While HW likes to tout the Chinese for locking down Wuhan to keep INTERNAL travel from occurring in China, they DID encourage residents of Wuhan to spread out all over the world, grab up all PPE and masks, and infect everybody else they could.

      Now, whether we like it or not, HW, $1200 is NOT enough to sustain a shut-down of a month, much less two to five years. The banks and other “too big to fail” entities on Wall Street got trillions of dollars overnight. The average American, if he was lucky, got the $1200 and some unemployment that will run out sooner than later.

      Sorry, but we need to take what measures we can, pay more attention to hygiene, health and fitness, and doing everything we can to keep our immune system strong, i.e. vitamin supplementation and exercise and sunshine. But we have to pay our bills. We may risk getting infected by the virus, but there is no doubt that unless we do, we have a bigger chance of dying from starvation or the elements when we are evicted from our homes.

  4. “He makes it rain on the just and the unjust.”

    No, it rains more on the just, the unjust stole the umbrella.

Comments are closed.