Reply To: Should football be cancelled?

[Anonymous]

If Sweden haven’t been outwitted, why have they done worse than Norway, Denmark and Finland? Also, 50% of Swedes locked themselves down voluntarily and the old and vulnerable voluntarily self-isolated, so it doesn’t exactly fit with your mantra anyway.

It should be noted that Belarus had a mass campaign of testing and again the public self-isolated, generally on their own accord. Also, the number of care homes for this virus to run amok in is low in Belarus.

If you’re going to praise these nations responses then you should look into whether they were that different. The fact that Sweden has done worse than neighbours in terms of death puts a huge question mark over them outwitting it. These nations also have differing social circumstances to ours, such as the care homes, family living and willingness to voluntarily take measures of caution.

They certainly didn’t defeat the virus by carrying on as normal, going to the pub and cramming themselves into the theatre shouting “screw you coronavirus” like you make out. If we were to adopt Sweden’s tactic we’d have to be more vigilant ourselves and given the reaction of those who see any kind of curbing of behaviour as totalitarian, do you think this would have been likely?

After all, with thanks to things like eat out to help out and pubs reopening we are seeing cases rise yet again. For some reason a softer touch has caused it to rise, despite you saying the opposite. Of course we are seeing fewer deaths, because the virus hasn’t re-entered care homes or other vulnerable places. Of course we have to adapt to the virus, and the economy can’t stay closed down forever, but let’s not pretend these things are without risk. Certainly without the apparatus to mitigate it (e.g. test and trace), which we do not have in any kind of workable manner.

The only way to return to normality is if this government get their act together and put in place means of mitigation by which we can have some normality returning and an economy churning along without worry of the virus becoming out of control once again. We’ve had months to put this in place, but the government have prioritised handing out contracts to their incompetent mates and have screwed up, meaning we aren’t much further on than we were in March. The economy should be a priority, but only when safe for everyone in this country, including the old and vulnerable. We haven’t done this.