Sweden's strategy paying economic dividends...

Sweden’s economy actually grew in the first quarter after it opted against a full virus lockdown

The Swedish economy expanded at a far superior rate than many of its European counterparts over the first three months of the year, data published Friday showed, following the government’s decision not to impose a full lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The Nordic country’s statistics office reported gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic health, grew at an annual rate of 0.4% in the first quarter.

 

Sweden’s GDP increased by 0.1% in the first quarter, when seasonally adjusted and compared to the final three months of 2019. The median forecasters in a Reuters poll of economists had expected to see a 0.6% contraction on a quarterly basis.

Given the fact that most everyone in Sweden is happy with their current situation (last poll I saw said that about 70% of Swedes were in favor of their Covid-19 strategy) I would offer that they (the Swedish public) get to determine that they made the right call for them.

If you compare what is happening in Sweden as to what is happening here in the US, you will see no real noticeable difference between the trends, even as the US shut everything down and is looking at an upcoming recession, if not depression.

In fact, there are at least ten states here that shut down that have worse numbers than Sweden (in terms of cases and deaths per million). Those numbers will likely grow here (as the lock downs are lifted). So we  can likely expect whatever "herd immunity" that is gong to happen (or not) to happen quicker in a place like Sweden than it will here.

The reality here is that what matters is the people.

Just like the people of South Dakota were in favor of keeping their state open (even if it meant more possible cases) the same held true for the people of Sweden. There is little need for our so called "experts" to weigh in on who is right and who is wrong, when the fact is that the people involved (not others) get to make those decisions.

Scandinavians (and especially Swedes) are a proud hard bunch of folk (my grandfather was an immigrant from Sweden and my Grandmother an immigrant from Norway). They are simply not like Americans, and definitely not like our current crop of whiny millennial Americans.