Michigan v Sweden in Corona Challenge


Posted On: Saturday - May 2nd 2020 11:54AM MST
In Topics: 
  US Police State  Liberty/Libertarianism  Socialism/Communism  Kung Flu Stupidity



I've got a number of non-Kung Flu posts that ought to be written and posted. Upon reading through more of Part VII of Mr. E.F. Hail's essays a while ago, I noticed a number that stuck out. That is, the population of Sweden, per his number is VERY CLOSE to that of the State of Michigan, per my looking up of it to get a rough deaths/year number. I mean, they are within 1%*, just over 10 million, by 50,000 or so. That they are "very close" is not really my point, but it got me thinking of this Michigan v Sweden post (yeah, the "v" per modern lingo, as with Sharks versus Saltwater Crocs and Coronavirus versus Communism.

I'm not going to get into the population densities, which may be kind of similar, as Michigan has one BIG city like Sweden (Detroit v Stockholm**), a few more decent-sized ones, and plenty of rural area. (One can, of course just get average population density for each from their land areas - 30,000 mi2 for Michigan versus 160,000 mi2 for Sweden - but that average doesn't mean much.) This is not a technical or particularly numeric post, but a polemic, if you will, about how this purported crises of the Kung Flu was handled in each place.

Who would have thought it would have gone the way it did? As recently as 20 years back, Americans would have laughed at a scenario of Governors and other officials around the country declaring LOCKDOWNS and closures of private businesses, recreation areas, and other property willy-nilly. The commenter Jack D on unz noted that it reminded him of the scene in the Woody Allen movie Bananas in which the Esposito, absolute dictator of this Banana Republic, dictated:
From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!
(Yes, this was 1971.)

OTOH, even 50 years back, Americans knew Sweden as a Socialist society, with lots of rules that could be dictated from above, and a compliant population of Socialists themselves who were fine with all this. It's been a welfare state, basically, where those on the bottom economically get lots of (mandatory) help from those doing well, and an entrepreneur would find it harder to operate than he would have in the US. (It helped very much that the US military had been protecting the place from Communism, for free!) Not only that, but those of us not all that enamored with feminism saw Sweden as the ultimate feminist society, where men were asked to sit down to pee***, boys were raised as girls (and vice versa) to prove a point, and other such nonsense. Sure, it wasn't everyone that wanted this, and they did have ABBA, but still.

How about Michigan in the past? If you go far back enough, to the 1950s, the Motor City, Detroit, with it's busy, prosperous downtown on the Detroit River, was known as the "Paris of the West". NO! They were absolutely NOT joking. (Then the 1960s and the riots happened - no time in this post for that - see .) With all the fresh-water shoreline, Michigan is a sportsman's paradise. All of America, not just MIchigan, had lived under the wonderful US Constitution, when it was still really operating, and so of course the society was much more free economically than Sweden.

Just yesterday though, Peak Stupidity noted and disparaged the extreme Police State tactics that Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been using on the Michiganders due to the "emergency" that we call the Kung Flu Infotainment Panic-Fest. It's been more extreme than in most other States, and it's caused some pushback by decent non-authoritah-kissing residents. I really meant to include more on this in that last post, but got distracted writing about reasons one might become a Governor Whitmer. Therefore, I'll point the reader again to the CBS article with information on some of the resistance by the State Legislators of Michigan:
GOP legislative leaders say the legislature has the authority to extend the state of emergency, not Whitmer, and declined to do so Thursday. Republicans have pushed back against some aspects of the stay-at-home order and urged Whitmer to restart parts of the state's economy soon.

[SNIP]

"Any attempt by Governor Whitmer to unilaterally extend the states of emergency and disaster past April 30, 2020, without legislative approval would be contrary to both law and Michigan's constitutional system," both resolutions say.

On the Senate floor Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Republican, indicated a court battle would be coming.

"If she does not recognize the end of the emergency declaration, we have no other choice but to act for our constituents," Shirkey said.

Whitmer's office said in a press release that she intends to veto a bill passed by the Legislature on Thursday which would have codified some of her coronavirus executive orders until their expiration dates. The bill would not have extended the state of emergency and did not codify her stay at home order.
It's very dangerous to give a loophole for one authority to use emergency powers to override all other rule of law, at ANY level of government. No doubt, it's hard to codify this into law, as there may be some REAL crisis that requires someone to take full charge. You don't give that power out lightly. Perhaps these Michigan Legislators, if they can remain some type of majority as demographic changes happen for the worse, can change this crap before next time around.
The tensions between the governor and the legislature over executive emergency powers have been simmering since a large protest in Lansing earlier this month against a previous version of Whitmer's stay-at-home order. The current order removed some restrictions that critics viewed as arbitrary, such as a travel ban between homes, rules prohibiting certain activities and requiring certain areas of stores to be blocked off.
Unbelievable. The people of Michigan are fed up too:
As the legislature met on Thursday, hundreds of protesters gathered at the Capitol building in Lansing to voice frustrations about the stay home order, including some who were armed and entered the Capitol. Democratic State Senator Dayna Polehanki tweeted a photo of armed protesters in the Senate gallery. People are allowed to openly carry guns inside the Michigan Capitol building.
As well they should. A pro-panic, pro-Authoritah D-legislator sounded pretty perturbed about this, as well she should be, as that's the point. From a tweet by State Senator Dayna Polehanki
Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us. Some of my colleagues who own bullet proof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today.
This stuff is very heartening. Not all of America is lost, or at least, not all of Americans are lost.

Meanwhile, back in Sweden, with the Socialists, Mr. Hail, in his Part VII essay summarizes:
Sweden’s Triumph Over the Corona-Cult
When the dark clouds of the CoronaPanic were looming in late February and early March, most found it hard to resist the then-building international chain-reaction of Panic. At the national level in the West, Sweden alone distinguished itself, from beginning to end, and led the West’s best response to this flu-strain pandemic.
“We, the Swedish government, decided…in January that the measures we should take against the pandemic should be evidence-based. When you start looking around for the measures being taken now by different countries, you find that very few of them have any shred of evidence basis…”

Dr. Johan Giesecke, world-renowned epidemiologist, adviser to the Swedish government, and the man who hired Anders Tegnell to direct the Swedish coronavirus pandemic strategy, speaking April 17.
The anti-Panic side argued for this approach all along. All but the most panic-addled and committed of the pro-Panic side were beginning to recognize, by the second half of April, that Sweden was right, that there was no need for the shutdowns, that this flu-virus is not fundamentally different from any other flu-virus in its behavior.
From what I've read on that site and elsewhere, the Swedish government has implemented a hands-off policy with almost no restrictions, though the citizens have used their own measures and common-sense to protect their own selves (what a concept!) Business is very much down, and people are not out and about as if this were 2019, but that's their choice, and a lack of restrictions lets small business react accordingly. Though I praise the policy highly, it was still the authoritah from above in Sweden that MADE this wise decision Is it not always the most wise move to let the individuals decide how they want to handle it? That’s basically how it was left for them, but there need be no government to leave the people this. That is definitely too much to ask in a Socialist country, but, as a country, we are in no position to criticize!

After all these polemics about the ideology, what about the results in these similar-sized entities?

From the CBS article:
As of Thursday [meaning April 30th], Michigan has reported 41,379 cases of coronavirus and the virus has caused 3,789 deaths in the state. More than a million Michiganders have filed for unemployment, as businesses have been forced to close to slow the spread of the virus.
That last sentence was stricken from the record, due to "THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!" (... like a gunshot victim stricken with the COVID-one-niner.) That's 10% of the entire population of the state, working people, kids, babies, grannies, that just now filed for unemployment.

From Mr. Hail:
With the epidemic-arc in sustained decline as of mid-April, coronavirus-positive deaths stood as 2,427 as of this writing [he included through April 26th], perhaps rising to as high as 3,000 to 3,500 by the (imminent) end of the epidemic.
Mr. Hail gives "ICU intakes" as the best data for Swedes stricken with the Kung Flu and in bad shape (He should feel free to correct me, as I gathered that this was ICU patients tested positive WITH the Corona virus.)

The number of people reported (as in Michigan) doesn't mean that much, as I've seen other graphs (cannot find them for attribution right now) that show the number of cases, in lots of countries being linear with number of people tested! All that means is that likely lots of people are already infected. Mr. Hail see the "herd immunity" state being arrived at already in Sweden. How about in Michigan? Plenty of people DO disregard the Governor's orders, but it would take longer there, I'd guess.

For both of these political entities, the death rate per population with an assumption noted in the postscript here, is ~ 0.03%.

Before we get our results of this final bracket contest, folks, let me put a word in about the management. The post yesterday focused a bit on women leaders, their tendency toward hysteria in rough times, and the nanny trait. Michigan has this hysterical woman Governor right now. Not all women are like this - I give you Iron Lady Maggie Thatcher as Exhibit A, but then here's the plaintiff's attorney with the Commie Globalist bitch Angela Merkel as his Exhibit A. There are men in the Michigan legislature trying to stop the madness there, as we've already excerpted reports of.

What about Sweden? You wouldn't think it, would you, with the high level of Feminist Stupidity seen there over the years. However, per Wiki, the Prime Minister right now is one Mr. Stefan Löfven, and there are men who are heads of departments of Justice, Defense, and Infrastructure. When you get to Finance (uh, oh!), Health, Environment, Culture, and Education, well, whaddya expect, they are infested. I don't know who was in charge during most of this 3rd-world immigration invited-invasion, but could the male PM have something to do with this common-sense response to the Kung Flu? (Commenter Ganderson has chimed in once, so hopefully we'll get more out of him - wiki, and the whole web, for that matter, is only good up to a point.)

Let's sum up this Michigan v Sweden Corona-Fest, shall we, as this has been an extremely long post for Peak Stupidity and I'm getting hungry:

- The State of Michigan, still supposedly under the law of the US Constitution, with Americans, some whose forefathers rebelled against tyranny: Locked down to an extreme. Full authority used by a tyrannical Governor claiming emergency powers. ~ 3,800 dead with the Kung Flu and supposedly rising like hell per the Governor. Economy in shambles. People being bailed out by the Feral Gov't using a few Trillion more dollars of made-up money.

- The country of Sweden, seen by Americans as the nanny-state, ultimate in economic Socialism. People left to make their own decisions. State authoritah not needed. ~2,500 dead with the Kung Flu, and tailing as in any other bad flu season. Economically hit hard but subject to rise per efforts of the people.

WINNER in a KNOCK-OUT: Sweden ... eden... den ...


PS: Note in the results that I used the phrase "WITH the Kung Flu", as even these, the actual low number is Sweden and slightly higher number in Michigan, could be high. Michigan would have more of a reason to inflate them, so perhaps the results on deaths per population are about equal.



* Is that counting Somalians in Sweden and Mexicans in Michigan? We don't know. That's not the point in this post (for a welcome change).

** Even with the Moslem immigration, I think Stockholm wins this one by forfeit - Detroit boosters have not shown up due to being car-jacked on their way to the match.

*** See, I don't get that. Was it just for fairness and equality? I mean we do fine leaving the seat down here and never moving it, except for cleaning. You've read it before in the restaurants: "We aim to please. You aim too, please."

***************************************
[UPDATED: Later 05/02:]
Added 2 paragraphs on the sex of the current politicians in these 2 entities.
***************************************

Comments:
Robert
Monday - May 4th 2020 4:01PM MST
PS:

RE: Ganderson and bad signs.
The nearby larger town has just cancelled their 4th of July celebration. In the Former USA.
Ganderson
Monday - May 4th 2020 3:32PM MST
PS. Slightly OT: when Bananas first came out I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. Watched it again a couple years ago- not chuckle, not a laugh, not a tee hee. Surprising.

Bad sign- had a History Department meeting today- most of my colleagues are nice people, but moonbats to the core.There was discussion of “ what if school doesn’t reopen in the fall.” I think the states run by people like Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker, Cuomo, that witch in MI and Newsome are going to stretch this out as long as they can. I fear actual violence if we don’t open soon.
MBlanc46
Monday - May 4th 2020 2:21PM MST
PS AE: I’d say that people doing what they want to do, or at least having an honest shot at it, is in principle a good thing (even if they’re doing something that I don’t like). Regarding Ron Unz, it’s hard to know what to make of him. He clearly has never met a conspiracy theory that he doesn’t like. As a rootless cosmopolitan, it’s easy to understand that he wouldn’t have much use for the American nationalists that Sailer and Derbyshire draw to their blogs. Maybe he’s simply chuffed at all the traffic they draw to his site. He’s always bragging that he’s getting more traffic than old stalwarts like the Nation and the New Republic. Or perhaps it’s something deeper.
Moderator
Monday - May 4th 2020 12:06PM MST
PS: Federalist, not to chime in within every conversation here ('cept I am): I agree with this "sunk costs" theory of why the officials are acting this way.

There is also a cover-your-ass factor. Though we and many common-sense people with some perspective (as I wrote on Mr. Hail's blog) understand, these Governors mostly don't know enough about anything semi-technical like this. Therefore they will listen to experts. Even if they do have a greater number of experts telling them what we, Mr. Hail, Dr. Wittkowski, and plenty of others are saying, they'll cover their asses with "what is safest".

They don't know - maybe if they ease off their Police State tactics, the Lyin' Press will publish some numbers that make Michigan (for example) look worse and get lambasted. So, in some ways, they are pressured into this.

There is the "zero tolerance" on common-sense factor that is everywhere in Big-Biz, Big-Ed, and Government worlds. There's another post. Dammit, the stupidity never ends! (So, can I quit my day job?)
Federalist
Monday - May 4th 2020 9:48AM MST
PS-

Hail said:
"How else do we understand people like Governor Whitmer? Does she have no one advising her who is aware of (understands and can explain) the good news out of Sweden (and all the randomized population studies being done everywhere)? There must be some serious Corona-Groupthink going on. Whitmer is a true-believer in the cult's prophecies and is lashing out when her friends and family staged an intervention to get her out of the cult."

I think part of the problem for Whitmer and a lot of other political figures is that they've gone too far to turn back. It's the sunk costs fallacy. It's now clear that Covid 19 wasn't remotely as bad as was thought and that the policies embraced pretty much across the United States were a catastrophic failure.

Anything short of immediately ending the shutdown measures to lessen the damage done is completely irrational. But if that happens, they are admitting that they were tragically wrong. Instead, they redouble their efforts. They have a psychological need to believe. The choice for Whitmer and those like her is to see oneself a Churchill-like figure leading the people through a great crisis or admitting total failure.

Moderator
Monday - May 4th 2020 4:52AM MST
PS: OK, now that confused me. I'll play with it, or better yet, look at the program, later.

About the Lyin' Press reporters and Swedish deaths. Again, Hail, they are not at all the brightest of people. They do want all the attention, and they don't want the narrative to fall apart. Do they personally want more Swedish people to die? Nah, but big numbers are another thing. They want the big numbers.

I think a guy like Ron Unz, no idiot (in most ways), may really want to see Swedish people die, as he REALLY REALLY REALLY doesn't want to be wrong. He is freaking about saying "millions of more Americans are gonna die!", but he doesn't seem to care about Americans otherwise. He gives us these hysterical warning simply as his way of proving that, yeah, Americans suck again.

Ron Unz is completely against all things American (not just the government and Deep State) in his writings. He hires Steve Sailer, and pays for columns by Pat Buchanan, John Derbyshire, Ron Paul, and now Michelle Malkin (yea!), so it makes me wonder is he's ever read their stuff other than via skimming their stuff once in a while on his site and then chiming in with some stupidity or other.
Moderator
Monday - May 4th 2020 4:44AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, I'll go backwards this time regarding your 3 comments. I think the last one had that less-than sign again, is that right? Does it cut off afterwards? Shoot, I don't need to ask you, let see here:

BTW, if it makes you feel any better, even the great-working unz site does the same. I had a bunch of stuff auto-deleted before I learned to just write "greater than", etc.

First the symbol: <

Now, some text afterward.
Hail
Monday - May 4th 2020 1:35AM MST
PS --
Historical footnote on Whitmer: She was on the list of possible VP candidates for Bide. She was ranked 10th in the PredictIt betting markets (of about 20 total choices; 14 ranked at 2% or higher and 6+ ranked at 1% or
Hail
Monday - May 4th 2020 1:33AM MST
PS --
Credit to Ron Unz for running as a lead-article on May 3 the recent pro-Sweden article by Mike Whitney ("While Sweden Succeeded While Others Failed").

I predicted that the acknowledgement of Sweden's success would break through into the mainstream by early May and that the holdouts who believed Sweden was wrong would fade fast by mid-May. I now appear to have been too optimistic in those predictions.

The case for Sweden is solid, but it's harder to judge how long it will take attitudes to adjust.

But it's only a matter of time before people do exactly the kinds of comparisons you've done in this post. Why did (e.g.) Michigan shut down (and now for up to three full months, unilaterally ordered extended by Whitmer over the vote of her legislature), if there was no different result than Sweden had with its Stay Open strategy? In fact, our knowledge of epidemiology means the Michigan strategy is worse, in that the strong and healthy are not developing herd immunity so the virus will likely be back, whereas the end is in clear sight in Sweden.
Hail
Monday - May 4th 2020 1:18AM MST
PS --
RE: "They don't want more Swedes to die"

Maybe not in a specific sense of malice towards Swedes, but in the numbers sense, they need it. Often it manifests in vague predictions of doom looming (as late as April 15, some highly credentialed team published a silly "180,000 deaths by summer" guesstimate). As you wrote:

"The narrative is 'it's exponential! Exponential, I tells ya!'. That's their story, and they're sticking to it."

Observations like this led me to realize some weeks ago that it bears all the signs of being a cult, an apocalypse cult. I don't really even mean that metaphorically.

How else do we understand people like Governor Whitmer? Does she have no one advising her who is aware of (understands and can explain) the good news out of Sweden (and all the randomized population studies being done everywhere)? There must be some serious Corona-Groupthink going on. Whitmer is a true-believer in the cult's prophecies and is lashing out when her friends and family staged an intervention to get her out of the cult.
Moderator
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 7:20PM MST
PS: The race card, last refuge of hysterical broads...

and man-broads.
Hail
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 4:41PM MST
PS--
this just in:

Top headlines

New York Post
"Michigan governor says protesters displayed 'worst racism and awful parts' of US history"
4 hours ago

PBS
"Michigan’s governor decries racism at protests"
6 hours ago

Of course!
Moderator
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 6:31AM MST
PS: Hail, re your 2nd comment:

1) This is stuff I didn't get into myself. You'd figure some of that, but it does not AT ALL fit the general narrative about poor downtrodden black/brown/yellow people. You either have to find they are hardest hit due to the white man, or STFU about it, assuming you are trying to keep your job in the Lyin' Press.

It's be a big no-no to state: Hey, if you're white and you're being careful, this thing is just about done with, and, unless your 75 with some health problems, there's no cause for concern. I'm sure they'd like to hear it, but they've got to get that news elsewhere.

2) That's about as far as I'd go too, Mr. Hail. The nursing home deaths should have been a big warning to, guess who? NURSING HOMES! I doubt the staff in most of the places (in America, I'm talking about now) is up for any thinking and planning (usually one nurse per floor, or just per building, and loads of minorities.) They've caused people to die earlier than they would have. It sounds like Sweden has the same problem - it would not have been a problem 25-30 years back, with the places staffed by Swedes.

I'm for the government(s) getting involved in exactly the manner you stated - giving out guidelines and advice, but not law.
Moderator
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 6:23AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, re your 1st comment:

Not one in 100 Americans would know even a small portion about the international data you show on your site (just reading Part 8 now). Fair enough, but you figure if you had a responsible and intelligent mass media here (haha!), then there would be talking heads comparing this data to America's. They'd be mentioning Sweden using some numbers, rather than just disparaging the place for being "reckless" or something.

I really don't think the Lyin' Press talking heads WANT more people to die, as they want to feel good about themselves. They are all about saving the world, just like Woodward & Bernstein - that's where this transition from reporters (with the 5 "W"s) to journalists started. The problem is, as we've all seen, is that those people are idiots. So, they really think they are living in a science fiction movie like Andromeda Strain come to life.

The Lyin' Press idiots make themselves feel smarter by giving out lots of numbers from "experts" with no knowledge on the underlying uncertainty or sometimes just pure bullshit.

They don't want more Swedes to die (or at least don't care), but the narrative is "it's exponential! Exponential, I tells ya!". That's their story, and they're sticking to it.
Moderator
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 6:10AM MST
PS: I just missed your 3-minute ago post, Mr. Ganderson. Man, this place is busy!

First, that should have been "... both of you *two*" dangit.

I would imagine it IS pretty hard to say know to a long-legged blonde named Elin Nordegren, even when she gets on one her hippy-dippy horoscope kicks, or recycling everything including the pets, or some feminist silliness.

Maybe the people are just too nice. I think in WI and MN, until the mid-1960s, this country just had a huge mass of Conservative inertia ("conservative" in the political sense, not as in physics. That was probably not the case in Sweden.

Moderator
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 6:05AM MST
PS: For both Mr. B and G, yeah, we've been pretty anti Socialism here. I do understand what both you too, along with plenty of others, are saying about it working out OK in a very unified homogeneous country like the old Sweden.

I personally don't think it's a good thing a) on principle, and b) because it's dysgenic. Even for a homogeneous population, would it not be the more irresponsible who take advantage, have more children on everyone else's dimes, etc? White people or not, I still believe this, but I think it's a long run thing. Sweden couldn't test this out, as they invited the hundreds of thousands (maybe over a million?) far-foreigners, which changes the experiment.
Ganderson
Sunday - May 3rd 2020 6:02AM MST
PS. Without looking it up, I don’t believe the Swedes have ever elected a female PM.
I always wondered about the feminization of Sweden. Does it have something to do with good looks? More likelihood off caving into the feministas’ agenda when the requestee looks like Elin Nordegren?
Minnesota and Wisconsin, both with large Scando-American populations and both liberal states (MN more so, IMHO) don’t seem to me to be any further down the path to Scandi-style “sit-when-you-pee- ism. Who knows.
Hail
Saturday - May 2nd 2020 11:39PM MST
PS --
Also this. I choose to refrain from making any specific criticisms of the Hero of the Corona-Hour (Sweden), so rather than toss in any editorializing I will just report two things:

(1) "Immigrants, and Blacks, and Black-Immigrants, Hardest Hit." Early reports have had it that Muslim "migration background" people had significantly higher corona-positive hospitalization (and death?) rates than ethnic Swedes. At one point I think the health ministry announced that 5% of coronavirus-positive deaths in Stockholm were Somalis alone, meanwhile Somalis are said to be 0.5% of the population in Stockholm County (no comment). Syrians in Sweden (also no comment) are also said to be hit comparably hard.

I don't really know why this is and don't have the full count. But googling over to Michigan's COVID19 deaths page, they say 48% of deaths are to Whites and 41% are to Blacks, 6% Unknown (there is no category for Hispanics for some reason). This is far more Blacks than the state's overall population (14%). On that, Sweden and Michigan look similar.

(2) "Communication problems with refugee staff at Swedish nursing homes." A large portion of the ethnic Swedes in the corona-positive at Death column were nursing home patients, there as everywhere else. A number of these are believed to have died because of miscommunication between the government and the refugee staff, who couldn't understand basic Swedish (no comment) failed to follow guidelines to protect those places during the peak period of the epidemic.

(Point 2 makes me think, more on topic with your blog entry here: If there is a role for government intervention in a peak-flu-event, it is to take measures to oversee the protection of the most vulnerable in nursing homes. And one of the ways to protect them is to let the rest of society live as normal for herd immunity to build and the virus can no longer circulate...)
Hail
Saturday - May 2nd 2020 11:26PM MST
PS --
Sweden's triumph now stands at the threshold of being complete, and all without a single restaurant or business being mandatorily closed. We really all could have been Sweden, but the pro-Panic forces seized control at the critical period, backed by the significant power of the media.

Some pro-Panic Unz commenters, as well as the vast majority of the low-info corona-media-consumers, are either unaware of, or willfully ignoring, the lesson of Sweden.

There are people on the latest pro-Sweden thread at Unz either saying "It's totally unclear, we have to wait and see" (maybe, but if we haven't seen the Neil 'Doomer' Ferguson's apocalypse yet, why would the curve suddenly reverse and start exploding now? Where are these bodies going to come from?), and a bitter pro-Panic holdout element even still making wacko claims like "180,000 deaths around the corner for Sweden," which to my mind are detached from reality..
Ganderson
Saturday - May 2nd 2020 4:04PM MST
PS Mr Mel Blanc (or is it Mr Mont Blanc) is correct in every particular.
My sources in Sweden tell me things are going pretty well there.
The President made a mistake in his presser the other day, saying things were better in lockdown Norway. Stop listening to Fauci, Don.
MBlanc46
Saturday - May 2nd 2020 3:43PM MST
PS Sweden used to be, until recently, a very homogeneous society. Everyone who lived in Sweden was a Swede. Their ancestors had lived there for centuries. They all had pretty much the same background. They were similar in most ways. So they could agree on what they wanted to do individually and what they wanted to do communally. They eventually pushed it too far to the communal side, so they throttled back on that somewhat. Goodness only knows what will happen to Sweden now that they’ve decided to turn the place into the Middle East and Africa. It’s already pretty clear that whatever happens won’t be good. The US was never as homogeneous as Sweden used to be. We could never have agreed to such a large share of communal action as the Swedes had. Our Left is trying to run the US as if it were the old Sweden. While at the same time stirring up group hatred. You know that won’t end well.
Robert
Saturday - May 2nd 2020 3:27PM MST
PS: Also, was there ever a Swedish boy who said: I wish life could be Michigander magazines.

P.S. From what I gather from a relative who still lives in Chicago, Illinois is just as bad. As a Polish lady who escaped in the mid '80s told me: You Americans think you are free. You don't even know what freedom is!

Twenty years ago, I did not get her point.
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