Thread by @phl43

Here are some true claims:
1) The bet on which Sweden originally sold its strategy, that it would reach herd immunity quickly, has failed.
2) It doesn't follow that it was the wrong strategy.
3) The predictions of people who oppose Sweden's strategy were also completely wrong.

It's interesting how everyone keeps talking about 1, but systematically forgets about 3. According to the predictions opponents of Sweden's strategy made last Spring, there should have been more than 65,000 deaths by now, but this has been memory holed.

https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1263497666144669696

The truth is that, if you had told them back in April that there would only be 6,000 deaths in Sweden right now, they would never have called that a "failure", because they had predicted something far worse. It was only labeled a "failure" and usually far worse later 🤷‍♂️

Now, it's not over yet and it's clear that more people are going to die in Sweden, but it's also clear that it won't be the holocaust people had predicted and that many continue to predict.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject, e. g. people's worthless GDP comparisons, their nonsensical denial of complicated trade-offs, the fact that the cost-benefit profile of different policy options depends on where you are on the epidemic curve, etc.

I've already discussed those points on Twitter, but it's a very complicated topic and Twitter is probably not the ideal medium to discuss it. Perhaps I'll write a blog post about it, though I don't know when I'll have time, but I wish people would stop pretending it's simple.