"The public lacked, in short, standards of comparison. It was only as time passed and the steady rise in the death-rate could not be ignored that public opinion became alive to the truth."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"He knew quite well that it was plague and, needless to say, he also knew that, were this to be officially admitted, the authorities would be compelled to take very drastic steps. This was, of course, the explanation of his colleagues' reluctance to face the facts."
Albert Camus
"Rats died in the street; men in their homes. And newspapers are concerned only with the street."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"We tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"Many continued hoping that the epidemic would soon die out and they and their families be spared. Thus they felt under no obligation to make any change in their habits, as yet. Plague was an unwelcome visitant, bound to take its leave one day as unexpectedly as it had come."
"What's true of all the evils in the world is true of the plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves. All the same, when you see the misery it brings, you'd need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in tamely to the plague."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two do make four is punished with death."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"There's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is — common decency."
/Albert Camus, The Plague
"What's natural is the microbe. All the rest — health, integrity, purity (if you like) — is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention."
/Albert Camus
"Once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of the plague was ended."
THE END
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A thread to explain everything everywhere all at once – about the Swedish covid strategy! 🧵🇸🇪
This is what you should read to understand what happened in Sweden.
Everything becomes much more coherent and clear and tells us what we should learn and not.
1) Start with this excellent thread which explains the logic behind the strategy.
TL;DR Tegnell went for WHO's classic flu strategy – based on the mistaken assumption that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of covid was ten times lower than others thought.
Tegnell & Giesecke thought that covid spread more quickly than it did and was about as deadly as the flu. Hence: it made sense to use the WHO plan for the flu. But they got the numbers wrong.
"In order for a crisis to evoke a rally, it must be perceived as a ‘nation-disrupting event’, which elicits a ‘deep sense of distress among the public’, including fear (at the nation’s perceived power loss) and anger (at the nation’s perceived status loss)."
"This happens when the crisis at hand is seen as ‘pertaining to the “true” essence or virtue of the nation, which should be celebrated or requires protection’ (Feinstein 2020)."
Stort tack Markus. Fantastisk sammanfattning av coronarevanschismen!
"Att utifrån ett bristfälligt mått på överdödlighet påstå att Sverige hanterade pandemin väl säger nog mest om människors önskan att ge upprättelse åt den svenska coronahanteringen." gp.se/debatt/missvis…
"Flera av dessa problem påtalades av den medarbetare på SCB som lämnade ut siffrorna till SVD:s vetenskapsjournalist. ... Resultatet är ett trubbigt mått som 'fått ganska mycket kritik' för att låna SCB-medarbetarens egna ord."
"Att frestas att tillskriva skillnader i överdödlighet främst till Folkhälsomyndighetens omtvistat kompetenta ledarskap är inte rationellt."
"Hur ska 'bekräftad myndighetsinformation' hanteras om den inte går att lita på? Satsa på mångfald och glöm rådet att vissa källor inte behöver granskas, skriver medievetaren Kajsa Klein."
Ja, man hade kunnat ta fasta på EU:s smittskyddsmyndighet ECDC:s uppmaning från februari 2020 om att följa försiktighetsprincipen:
'We recommend a cautious approach due to possible transmission through aerosols.'"
"Representanter för svenska myndigheter tillhör de som aktivt försökt påverka andra länders pandemihantering. När ... Anders Tegnell i mars 2020 uppmanade ECDC att ta bort munskyddsrekommendationen gjordes det med motiveringen att den skulle antyda att viruset var luftburet."
"'Vi anser att kommunikationen, framför allt i inledningen av pandemin, i alltför stor utsträckning förefaller ha styrts av en vilja att inte oroa människor', skriver Svante Werger [MSB]."
"'Lärdomen från tidigare kriser var att det är 'oftast är upplevd brist på information som är det mest oroande'.
Om myndigheterna medvetet undanhöll information skulle det kunna bli 'förödande för förtroendet', enligt Svante Werger."