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Showing posts from August, 2020

Florida and Texas are the new and improved Sweden: short shutdowns work best

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From March to early May 2020, the U.S. caught up on ventilators, PPE, and testing. In May there was a juncture: continue the “flatten the curve” strategy, or attempt to suppress the virus with an extended shutdown. States that continued with the “flatten the curve” strategy and re-opened had a lower unemployment increase and a similar death rate as states with extended shutdowns. Sweden is much maligned for not implementing a complete shutdown, resulting in a much higher COVID-19 death rate than its neighbors Norway and Denmark , albeit a lower death rate than many other European countries . Almost half of Sweden’s 6,000 deaths came from not sufficiently protecting nursing homes . Sweden’s GDP contracted significantly but outperformed most of Europe since Sweden had far fewer business closures. The U.S. coronavirus response was much looser than most European and Asian countries, many of whom had strict shutdowns where people could rarely leave their homes. Within the U.S., there we