Sweden says: Let them die!

I've been holding fire on Sweden so far because I wanted to let the news reports build up, and let the numbers tell their own story. Well, the numbers are in.

Most of the 3,698 people who have died from corona virus in Sweden so far were over 70, despite the fact that the country said shielding risk groups was its top priority.

Sweden, with 10m inhabitants, has kept more of society open than is the case in most of Europe.

...

Sweden did ban visits to care homes on 31 March. But as in many European countries, relatives, staff and union officials have shared concerns that protective clothing arrived too late, and that some staff may have gone to work at the start of the crisis despite showing symptoms of Covid-19.

Now, increasing numbers of workers are also coming forward to criticise regional healthcare authorities for protocols which they say discourage care home workers from sending residents into hospital, and prevent care home and nursing staff from administering oxygen without a doctor's approval, either as part of acute or palliative (end-of-life) services.

They're pretty much letting them die. Oxygen not administered, hydrochloroquine not given, no PPE for the staff, no special efforts at all, really. Oh but they finally acknowledged there might be a problem on March 31st when they curtailed visiting hours.

Here's the Swedish Prime Minister's massage:

At a recent news conference, Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Löfven told the BBC that regional authorities had been trusted to make sure healthcare provision "works the best way" and given extra resources from the state to cover costs connected to Covid-19.

Last week the government also announced a further 2.2bn kronor (£185m) for additional training within care homes, with a view to creating 10,000 permanent positions for assistant nurses and care workers.

Mr Löfven said it wasn't currently the right time to reflect on potential failures, but a national commission would look at how things had been handled at a local, regional and national level as soon as the "acute" phase of the crisis was over.

Translating from the Swedish: "We're going to pretend to throw some of your money at it later. Now shut up and get back to work, you've got taxes to pay."

To put this in perspective, Sweden has so far lost more people to the corona virus than California. Okay? California, 3289. Sweden, 3698. California has four times Sweden's population. Canada, with roughly the same population has ~5600 deaths, so we're not doing as well as California. But even with the slow-motion horror that is the senior citizen care homes of Montreal, Canada is still doing about three times better than Sweden.

People forget that Sweden is a socialist nation. To a socialist, letting the "useless" old people in government funded care homes die looks like a cost savings.

The Phantom