A Side Bet Win

Sweden-Once Mocked for Its COVID Strategy-Now Has One of the Lowest COVID Mortality Rates in Europe | Jon Miltimore

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, I asked a simple question. Could Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus actually work? Unlike its European neighbors and virtually all US states, the Swedes had opted to not shut down the economy. The country of 10 million people took what was at first described as “a lighter touch.”

Like someone at a craps table betting the come line mid-game after the shooter has already established his pass line ‘point’, the Swedish narrative since the covid social experiment phenomenon began is a side-bet, a game within a game. In this case, it’s a come line bet won for those that esteem the liberty of individuals and fear and reject the collective will. It won’t affect the main game, and no matter how good the news, or how relevant the tale or information, it will be deemed fact-checked, debunked and mis-information by the majority, who will never take on board and factor in what happened in Sweden this whole time. Still, though, a minor win.

That said, Scandinavia, the Nordic countries, in general, are highly socialized & collectivized, the men long ago emasculated, so this is not a libertarian story. I’m not sure why Sweden swam upstream on this, while Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland did not, but it did buck the orthodoxy about covid from the very start, and while freedom as a basic, overriding principle may not have been its lighthouse, reason did seem to prevail about this issue.

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