Good Grief! Sweden is Killing its People!
Shôn Ellerton, May 28, 2020
I await, with open arms, all the blue-pilled protestors outside every IKEA store!
During the last two months, I’ve never ever seen so much effort by mainstream media to demonise one particular country (apart from North Korea) since, possibly, the Soviet Union back when I was a teenager during the last days of the Cold War. My old folks remember other countries like Germany and Japan getting the rap during WWII, but, hey, this is just nuts! You know which country I’m talking about, don’t you? Of course you do. It’s that somewhat maudlin little country that manufactures, possibly some of the most uncharismatic cars every made and exports affordable and effective furniture with funny little names like Fyrkantig, Sparsam, Dagstorp, and Fniss.
That’s right. Sweden!
Actually, I rather like visiting Sweden, as I used to on several occasions whether it was for business or pleasure. Other than the prolific mass of graffiti which seems to make its way onto so many lovely edifices and monuments, Sweden has an overall pleasant quality to it. And perhaps I was a little unfair with the car reference above. Apart from the extremely hideous, boxy, common but functional Volvo 245 of the 80s, there were some spectacular looking cars within Sweden’s automobile arsenal.
Sweden’s decision to assume everyday business as it was during pre-Covid times isn’t true as many of us know. Yes, there is no lockdown but there are rules in Sweden, and this is the thing; there have possibly always been more rules in Sweden than in many other countries in the free world today, but many don’t see it that way. They view Sweden as a totally liberal reckless society who gives little thought to those who are dying of the disease. A YouTube chappie I often used to listen to by the name of Stefan Molyneux had turned all conspiracy theorist-like when he announced that Sweden has a socialist elite that is trying to kill off its old folk. How very disappointing! Friends and family, most who I would consider reasonably intelligent have somehow lost all critical thinking and half their cerebral brain-mass having swallowed the ‘blue pill’ (a reference to that great sci-fi film, The Matrix) taking pleasure in vilifying comments regarding Sweden’s decision on its approach to the pandemic. I’m not going to write about or justify my numbers on my own reasoning as it would warrant an epic of its own, but I am convinced that Sweden made the right decision for the long term. Six or more weeks ago, my social media comments regarding Sweden’s strategy were attacked with such ferocity with little in the way of justification apart from citing the usual generic death count figures against its other Nordic neighbours without fully understanding why. Sweden is not Norway nor is it Finland or Iceland. Norway isn’t even a member of the European Union! Another distinguishing feature of Sweden from that of its Nordic neighbours is that it has had a massive influx of immigrants, notably from war-torn Syria, during the last two to three years.
Recently, there’s been a dampening down from those who rant against Sweden’s model, as if they have consigned themselves to the fact that many other models in opposition to Sweden’s are not doing particularly well either. Or maybe, perhaps, those who read my posts are just getting tired of me or the whole affair or whether they are slowly realising that lockdowns really are screwing up many people’s lives and that we all need to resume some normality in our daily lives.
There’s a great German word called schadenfreude. It amounts to enjoying the misfortune of others. Well, I can tell you this. There are many out there who are relishing the thoughts of schadenfreude if Sweden’s model fails miserably. Oh! The ecstasy of Sweden failing. Killing off its people because they didn’t follow other nations by reducing their economies to rubble due to enforced lockdowns. Oh yes, no way do we want Sweden to succeed, do we? After all, so many in the world have undergone hardship through lockdown, and look. Look! They’re still running at almost normal capacity, well, certainly far better than many other European countries in terms of its percentage decline in GDP. Why did we not do the same? Somebody needs to be accountable for this! And so on…
Social media has been especially virulent in practically scrubbing out, to the best of its ability, any interview or article which sides against the strategy of the mainstream elite. Many incredibly intelligent scientists, philosophers and businessmen have been wiped off social media for portraying their views against lockdowns. Many, thankfully, have not been affected due to their smart ways of skirting censorship through satire, a medium of thought which the uninitiated or unintelligent simply do not understand. One of my favourites is the American life coach and comedian, JP Sears, who hosts his popular YouTube channel, AwakenWithJP. One of his best videos relates to what it’s like to believe everything the media tells you. Here’s the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcUAG6t5aN8
Epidemiologists like Johan Giesecke, a senior advisor to the Swedish government, have been condemned to the ninth circle of Hell by brainwashed egits who have no space in their heads to comprehend logic and reason but would rather take the headlines of mainstream news as gospel of the truth. On the other hand, epidemiologists who side with the common narrative at the time of ‘lockdowns are good and for your own good’ are heralded as saviours and the oracles of truth. Take, for example, Prof Neil Ferguson, who had the British government act upon his advice to initiate a strict lockdown on the basis that half a million people will die in the UK if action is not taken to lock down. What is noteworthy of this whole affair is that his Imperial College papers were neither peer-reviewed or formally published when the advice was taken by the UK government. In May, it is ironic that he, out of many, breached their own lockdown rules, the most recent high-profile case being that of Dominic Cummings with his little road trip to the north of England. Below are two exceptionally well done unbiased half-hour interviews on the Unherd YouTube channel; one with Giesecke and one with Ferguson back in early May 2020. They are both worth listening to in their entirety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cYjjEB3Ev8
Again, around early May, there was the infamous case of the Bakersfield doctors (Drs Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi) who were interviewed as to their opinions that lockdowns may not be such a good idea and that increasing our levels of immunity by exposure to the virus could be a long-term viable solution. The backlash against the video went ‘mental’, distractors claiming that they weren’t real doctors or, if they were, they were doing it for profit’s sake. The doctors did cite some inaccuracies in their statistics but so do many others including so-called tried and trusted sources which follow the common narrative of the day. The interview was recorded and subsequently released on YouTube only to have it removed because it breached community guidelines which, in itself, is mind-blowing taking into consideration that a myriad of crackpot and harmful information remains untouched by the YouTube Gestapo. Thankfully, YouTube do not have a monopoly in the video-sharing world. The link to this video can be found on Bitchute below.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/oGVRqleTzzMi/
Let’s put yourself in the seat of the leader of a country which has enforced lockdown whilst your next-door country did not. You have little or no immunity so you’re counting cases every day. Oh God, this is so important! One little case…. We don’t want that, do we? And next door? Some more cases? Okay, this is not great, but the weekly death count isn’t much different from yours and guess what, they’ve already got to fifty percent immunity. How did that happen? You’re sat there with a 10-fold reduction in your economy whilst your murderous neighbour is doing, hmmm, not too badly. Meanwhile, you’ve got a nationwide plague of riots, an increase in suicides and mental health issues, and a burgeoning mass of unemployed people who are, at best, willing to chop off your gonads should they be offered the chance. OK, that got emotional, but I was almost in a laughing fit when I read the comments spitting with venom at Stephen Marshall, the Premier of South Australia after days and days boasting that we have had ZERO cases only to have ONE new case arise due to some woman who managed to get an exemption to fly back into South Australia from the UK (ample proof that far more Brits are infected than we think!). The same ‘fickle-heads’ who so avidly supported the premier one day ago turned utterly rabid with rage denouncing the premier for failing to do his duty.
Meanwhile, many miles away from Sweden lies a little island of the coast of China that has had surprisingly little mainstream media coverage of its own very successful pandemic model. Care to guess who? South Korea? Japan? China?
Nope.
It’s Taiwan. Although small in area, it has a whopping 24 million people living on it, and most of those live on the western side of the island interconnected by an intricate road network and a fabulous high-speed rail network from north to south.
Taiwan, a country bullied by China and abandoned by the WHO has an amazing track record during the pandemic. No lockdown, although the wearing of face masks had been enforced. Unlike Sweden; however, they closed their borders immediately. But like Sweden, businesses and restaurants have been open and the citizens have exercised discretion and care with regard to social distancing. The success of Taiwan lies in its very prompt and early actions to prevent the spread of the disease, having experienced SARS not that many years ago during 2010. They were prepared and consequently, suffered very few deaths and severe cases. However, despite their successes, coverage in the mainstream media has been disgracefully scant. Wrongfully so, many Westerners attribute the success of Taiwan to the ‘Chinese’ way of thinking and that it is largely a cultural reason why Taiwan did so well and how it cannot be compared to European nations. The same mistake, of course, applies to Nordic countries. I mean, after all, their flags look mighty similar to each other and they all look like the Vikings and eat Knäckebröd, don’t they?
Sweden, unfortunately, had a bit of bad start and were not prepared on time. Care homes for the elderly, sick and the vulnerable were left wide open with little in the way of isolating them from the virus. However, Sweden quickly ‘battened down the hatches’ disallowing contact to those in care homes, but by the time this had happened, many of the elderly had already succumbed to the virus and were in the process of fighting for their lives. Even towards the end of May, new deaths are being reported of which more than 95% had originated from these care homes. Great statistics can be found on statista by the way.
In contrast, the UK seemed to be bumbling along changing tact in their pandemic strategy at any opportune moment depending on the political situation of the day. Their populace is thoroughly confused as to what they can or cannot do. Many of those in old people’s homes have not been very well looked after or, worse, died unnecessarily due to poor care and negligence. It’s sad to say that this issue has been the highlight of many a news item since I can recall when I used to live there from the late 80s to the late 2000s. It’s not a recent phenomenon. And yet, the UK took the stance of enforcing lockdowns, albeit not very well considering their own proponents, many of which sit in high office, have been, themselves, flouting the rules. It necessarily follows that, if high-profile figures are caught breaching their own rules, imagine how many of the ordinary public are breaching lockdown. The UK has not been very consistent in its decision-making process on so many aspects of the pandemic crisis. For example, it took only two months (cough) for the UK to consider enforcing those entering the country to be in quarantine whereas other nations took immediate action to do so.
However, the moment one compares the performance of Sweden’s approach to controlling the pandemic with the UK’s, proponents for lockdowns will vehemently rise to action stating that the death count would have been much greater based on simple grade-school extrapolation of the data. The same oversimplified reasoning happens here in Australia. Only tonight on a media show called The Drum, a university professor by the name of Peter Collignon stated that if Australia followed the same model as Sweden, there would be more than 5,000 deaths through simple extrapolation. Really? That simple? My five-year-old son could have done this with a bit of graph paper!
Again, this emphasizes the fact that those countries which have enforced lockdowns are going to be in dire need of ‘saving face’ when the proverbial shit hits the fan when we find out that lockdowns have not been scientifically and conclusively proven to stop a pandemic. However, we should have been so far ahead of keeping our elderly and frail safer throughout all of this. Surely it would make more sense to provide services such as food, supplies and other assistance to those vulnerable whilst avoiding the need to enforce lockdowns on the general population. The cost of doing this would, undoubtedly, be far less than the economical cost of a general lockdown along with a rise of unemployment, a restive and divided nation, rioting and protests and a rise of other diseases and ailments which have been forgotten being shadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
One aspect which many agree about Sweden, the UK and many other nations which have had large number of cases is that one may have less to fear with a second wave, if it happens. Countries cocooned from the rest of society could fare worse if infection levels are very low and then take the repeated decision to lock down again once cases rise exponentially again if a successive wave occurs. However, the economic reality of having to endure multiple successive lockdowns could be very bleak indeed. I personally believe that this virus will keep spreading regardless of all the preventative measures. Granted, it flattens out the curve which is a commendable move but the ovine masses filled with fear and panic have moved towards holing up in their shells until as such, the virus is eliminated either on its own accord or by a vaccine which may never materialise. As for those who live day by day and need to work to feed their families, all debate whether to lockdown or not is totally irrelevant.
Having experienced a very nasty case of pneumonia back in 2005 whilst visiting my mother and sister in Austin TX, with each year that passes by, I believe that I will fear contracting this virus more and more. There is evidence that contracting small doses of the virus may have a less significant impact than a larger dose and, perhaps, might be the key to future protection from the virus. Unfortunately, there is uncertainty but do we wait until there is one-hundred percent certainty? I’d rather have it now than when I’m older. I recollect my father being given a small dose of horsepox in 1983 before venturing off for a trip to India. He was quite unwell as I remember for a couple of days but the alternative of contracting smallpox, a small possibility even during the 80s, would have been disastrous.
The notion to so many that Sweden is killing its citizenry with its ‘reckless’ laissez-faire strategy is astonishing to say the least, especially from those who claim that the UK, Belgium and New York City are doing the right thing by locking down. COVID-infected people in the US and the UK being forced into care homes seems a trifle reckless to me if the news coverage is remotely accurate. Keeping borders closed without needing a lockdown during the early stages of the pandemic seems to make sense, something which Taiwan did and Sweden did not. However, it remains to be seen whether Sweden ultimately made the right move in the long term with respect to border control, or rather, lack of it.
To end this story, I give to you the haunting final paragraph in The Plague by Albert Camus in which the city of Oran in Algeria had been re-opened from quarantine freed from the bubonic plague.
Now if you’ll kindly excuse me while I wander off to my local IKEA and service myself with a nice dollop of COVID meatballs!
~
Indeed, as he listened to the cries of joys that rose above the town, Rieux recalled that this joy was always under threat. He knew that this happy crowd was unaware of something that one can read in books, which is that the plague bacillus never dies or vanishes entirely, that it can remain dormant for dozens of years in furniture or clothing, that it waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers, and that perhaps the day will come when, for the instruction or misfortune of mankind, the plague will rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city. – Albert Camus
