<story><title>Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bbarnett</author><text>Will you force them with a gun?  To forgo all friends, family, comforts of home, and be literally trapped at work for months?&lt;p&gt;Money doesn&amp;#x27;t just buy people.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d essentially be drafting them.</text></item><item><author>dvdplm</author><text>This is exactly what needed to be done, in Sweden and elsewhere. Pay staff triple and have them stay with the old folks and get everything delivered by externals with as little contact as possible. And no new admissions into the care homes.</text></item><item><author>vondur</author><text>I believe there was one place in France where the care workers moved into the facilities and then the movement of people and items into it were strictly controlled. I believe no one died from Covid-19 at the facility.</text></item><item><author>usrusr</author><text>How do you completely lock down a care home? It&amp;#x27;s a labor-intensive industry and you can&amp;#x27;t just put care on hold for a few weeks like you could with an assembly line. The only way to keep a virus like this away from care homes  is to keep it away from friends and families of caretakers and from their friends and families. You can&amp;#x27;t focus prevention when you are dealing with presymptomatic spread.</text></item><item><author>frereubu</author><text>One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look nearly as bad.&lt;p&gt;Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. I&amp;#x27;ll be interested to see where countries are a year or two from now.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to say I support the Swedish government&amp;#x27;s strategy - I don&amp;#x27;t feel like I know enough to say what the best strategy is, although I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA and UK.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nmfisher</author><text>&amp;gt; Will you force them with a gun? To forgo all friends, family, comforts of home, and be literally trapped at work for months?&lt;p&gt;Seems far more reasonable than locking down &lt;i&gt;entire countries for months&lt;/i&gt;, asking people to forego friends and family (without even mentioning the consequent unemployment).&lt;p&gt;You wouldn&amp;#x27;t need to force anyone with a gun. A five-fold increase in wages - untaxed - would be more than enough incentive. The cost would be a drop in the ocean compared to the damage wrought by the measures adopted so far.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bbarnett</author><text>Will you force them with a gun?  To forgo all friends, family, comforts of home, and be literally trapped at work for months?&lt;p&gt;Money doesn&amp;#x27;t just buy people.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d essentially be drafting them.</text></item><item><author>dvdplm</author><text>This is exactly what needed to be done, in Sweden and elsewhere. Pay staff triple and have them stay with the old folks and get everything delivered by externals with as little contact as possible. And no new admissions into the care homes.</text></item><item><author>vondur</author><text>I believe there was one place in France where the care workers moved into the facilities and then the movement of people and items into it were strictly controlled. I believe no one died from Covid-19 at the facility.</text></item><item><author>usrusr</author><text>How do you completely lock down a care home? It&amp;#x27;s a labor-intensive industry and you can&amp;#x27;t just put care on hold for a few weeks like you could with an assembly line. The only way to keep a virus like this away from care homes  is to keep it away from friends and families of caretakers and from their friends and families. You can&amp;#x27;t focus prevention when you are dealing with presymptomatic spread.</text></item><item><author>frereubu</author><text>One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look nearly as bad.&lt;p&gt;Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. I&amp;#x27;ll be interested to see where countries are a year or two from now.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to say I support the Swedish government&amp;#x27;s strategy - I don&amp;#x27;t feel like I know enough to say what the best strategy is, although I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA and UK.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jessaustin</author><text>GP said &amp;quot;pay staff triple&amp;quot;. For 70% of nursing home workers in USA, that would be enough to get it done. The other 30% aren&amp;#x27;t rich enough to ignore tripled income, but rather they have family situations that would make it impossible. It&amp;#x27;s a pipe dream anyway, since our Congress is only capable of giving public money to rich people.</text></comment>