It's not just the circumstance that is flipped, but the cultural symbolism too. In the UK, for instance, I am given to believe that remaining in lockdown is sort of the choice of the "informed, data-driven" sort of person, whereas wanting out is the prole-ish, anti-authority, "down the pub" kind of option.

Here, extreme distancing has been given a bit of a populist, conspiracy-minded, "Alex Jones" sort of feel, while "we've got to live our lives, after all" is the smooth, metropolitan, technocratic choice.

My friend who lives in Stockholm, is Swedish and works in healthcare, expressed concern to me the other day that he felt the current Swedish approach was too "unemotional" and laissez-faire. And that he found it odd (after living for 6 years in NYC and London recently) how easily people just accepted one Scientist's recommendations without question (as well as the Government), without really understanding how many people could die. He said this "experiment" that's been touted and hyped all over, is one that and thousands of others didn't exactly sign up for.

Curious to know what your own opinion is of the Swedish model in handling this crisis? I mean I won't lie, I'm obscenely jealous that people are able to carry on life normally and not live as we all are currently, but I do wonder if it's all been a bit reckless.

In the U.S., it's definitely the metropolitans taking the strictest measures, while the working classes, whether urban or rural, are more laissez-faire. Of course, because it's the U.S., both sides are edging towards cartoonish extremes.

The Swedish approach was certainly risky, especially in the early days when there were still many unknowns about the virus, but it may end up proving to have been the best approach in the long run.

In many countries it seems that the mantra of "flattening the curve" has been taken to the extreme. Originally it was meant to have been taken as an acknowledgement that many if not most of us will eventually come into contact with the virus - and that we just need to slow the spread through reasonable social distancing where possible so as to not overburden the healthcare system, so as to be able to provide adequate medical care to those who will inevitably become seriously ill.

Somewhere along the line though, the goal seems to have shifted to "no one anywhere should come into contact with the virus ever". So we shut everything down at great cost, caused major disruptions to the economy and to people's lives; and now we're ultimately opening things up again with the very same sort of restrictions that they have in Sweden.

Unless you're on an isolated island and the spread was caught early (eg. New Zealand), eradication is just not feasible. There's a reasonable middle ground I think, whereby we can engage in low-risk activities like going to parks, shops, and schools, having small gatherings, or going to restaurants & bars with capacity restrictions; while also avoiding unnecessary high-risk activities like large gatherings & events, international travel, and focusing on the protection of high-risk populations.

No, the point isn't to merely slow the spread. It's also to get the numbers low enough that case-specific tracking and restrictions are possible, vs. today's measures that affect everybody. That also requires repeated mass testing of course. Slowing is part of it, to keep below the point where hospitals are overwhelmed (turning many patients away from real care), and to get to the point where some treatment is possible (we're finally there).

As for Sweden, they're doing poorly so far with 291 deaths per million, compared to the US' 220 and the world's 33.3 per WorldO. They've turned a small outbreak into a big one.

And a really high mortality rate vs confirmed case count:

US - 5.8%
Sweden - 12.2%

I don't think Sweden's approach will be the envy of any country once this is all said and done.

Sweden 3,000 deaths, Denmark 500 and Norway 200. We are talking of at least 2,000 preventable deaths in a very peaceful and rather small country. And counting as daily deaths are near 100.

And for what, two extra months with haircuts and bars? Norway and Denmark pretty much controlled the epidemic, planning the opening, while Sweden is still badly struggling.

Confirmed case numbers are useless in the absence of consistent and comprehensive testing (which is impossible), as is any metric calculated using them.

For example, let’s say one country conducts randomised screening, and another only tests people who arrive at hospitals with pronounced symptoms. Of course the latter is going to have a higher number of deaths per confirmed case, because you’ve eliminated all of the asymptomatic cases from the denominator.

The quality of data being thrown about by media and in conversation must be making statisticians everywhere cringe.

the mentality of sweden is that nothing their country or the government can do could be possibly be wrong.

In the US, if we had said no to social distancing and had this result in 10x as many deaths per capita as a neighboring, similar country, the media and political class would be apoplectic

There's a lot of apparent randomness to the numbers of fatalities in a given place. For example, Quebec (pop. 8 million) has 2,400 deaths while BC (pop. 5 million) has 120 deaths - and those are not only in the same country, but Quebec has taken even stricter additional measures.

While Sweden has had a fairly high death rate, it's impossible to say how much that'd have been different had they closed restaurants & barbershops (probably not significantly. Not many major outbreaks have been tied to these kinds of places).

Though it would be almost impossible to enforce/enact, I do wonder if it would be relatively benign to have small, local bars and restaurants operate "business as usual" while placing more restrictions on big clubs, chain restaurants and the like. And simply encourage people to limit their variation in going out for a bit.

As it is (well, was) I stopped by my normal local most Fridays after work for a few drinks (occasionally many more) and the crowd was largely the same week on week, particularly so for those sitting at the bar. Similarly some friends and I go to a different small place often on Sundays and usually sit at the same table. This is quite different from huge establishments where the crowd varies constantly.

In a Sweden type situation people may be able to self regulate better in this manner, I'm not sure.

Quebec has more than 10x the cases that British Columbia does, and if I had to guess the reason I'd say it's because Quebec has more connectivity to Europe. Europe is appearing to be the source of most coronavirus cases in North America.

But British Columbia has more connectivity to Asia, specifically China, no?

I'm wondering if BC's situation is similar to California's; there's speculation that California started getting COVID-19 infections earlier than thought, but our rate of infections and deaths aren't as high as New York's. And we here in California started social distancing well before our lockdown. We have a high connectivity to Asia, and especially SoCal, Chinese people have been traveling back and forth between here and China for many many years now. As early as late January, Coronavirus, or rather the fear of catching it, was already being blamed on the drop of customers at Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley---Even Chinese people were avoiding Chinese restaurants, because in the SGV, Chinese immigrants patronize all the authentic Chinese restaurants (and other people do too of course). Chinese New Year celebrations were also subdued here this year; many SGV cities hold their own Chinese New Year festivals, and from what I've heard, this year there were small crowds... so people were already avoiding these events because of COVID-19.

Also, we here in the SGV aren't so weirded out like other Americans when we see Asians wearing face-masks. They do it all the time. I wonder if that's also contributed to our lower rates of COVID-19 infections as compared with New York.

Right, but China doesn't have the deadliest strain, Europe does. BC has less connectivity to the European strain, hence far fewer deaths.

In retrospect, Asian connectivity doesn't appear to be a significant risk factor. Australia, even more connected to China than BC, has barely any cases, and a relatively modest shutdown. NZ has basically no cases.

It's not the only factor or even the main factor for the Quebec outbreak(s).

One thing is that Quebec had a full-blown unrestricted March school break right before this thing started going down. (Ontario's break was scheduled later and didn't really happen in terms of travel.)

People in Quebec travelled all over the place during that week and then returned home for another full week of school, work, activities, family gatherings, etc. until the crisis really hit on Friday, March 13.

In particular, families returning from trips and visiting grandparents has been a huge factor. Which explains why 85-95% of deaths in Quebec are in seniors' residences.

Another factor might appear odd but Quebec is home to Canada's largest orthodox Hasidic Jewish population. A large part of the outbreak in the NYC area was in Westchester County and other areas north of the city among the Hasidim. Well it so happens that these NY Hasidim have close ties to the Hasidim in the Montreal area. A whole bunch of the latter were in the NYC area to celebrate the Purim holiday in mid-March, and then returned home to Montreal. Once they go back they also were not the most diligent when it comes to respecting government orders on distancing and gatherings, and continued to hold events like weddings, engagement parties and funerals with large numbers of people for several weeks - until the government finally cracked down hard on them.

Yes, but as of now it appears that most cases in North America came from travel between Europe and North America. That could explain why, in general, the eastern half of the North American continent has had a disproportionate outbreak relative to the western half. Travel from Europe to North America wasn't significantly curtailed until more than a month after travel between NA and China was shut off.

That's not the case. The outbreak reached those countries pretty much on the same time. I remember when Norway registered more cases than Sweden somewhere on early March.

What played a role here was the completely different aproach, with Denmark and Norway acting quickly, with tough measures while Sweden were at a normal.

And given the high mortality of Sweden, they are probably testing very few patients and probably many people have died without being tested at all. Not sure if it's already available, but it would be interesting to confront the number of total deaths registered on April 2020 compared to the same month on 2019. They will probably have an excess of deaths way above those 3,000.

It's hard to view what has happened here in Sweden in isolation. Whatever the merits of Tegnell's programme, what happened in Swedish elder-care homes was monstrous. But these homes have been the subject of some scandal for a while now; I think everyone knows that austerity has diminished these facilities past the level most Swedes consider humane, and the way that COVID-19 swept through them was a factor of that as much as anything more pandemic-specific.

Beyond the elder-care issue, whose importance can't be diminished given how many of the dead here were over 80 and 90, I am not sure that the relative absence of lockdowns is really going to make much of a difference in the end. Maybe a second wave will vindicate or undercut Tegnell and co., but I don't think it is going to be so clear-cut.

It's nice to not live in a heavily policed circumstance, but to be honest I have been living in isolation for nearly two months, first in a rented cabin and next in the city. I am one of the fortunate professionals whose job allowed them that grace. As an immigrant, as is often the case, I think my personal norms were closer to that of my Anglo diaspora than most people.

Wow. This sounds a hell of a lot like Quebec.

All of these things you mentioned (bolded) were happening the exact same way in New York at the same time.