The jury is still out on "economic failure." The evidence cited on the economy is thin at best.
The main piece of evidence is that "Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent." Economic forecasts are ridiculously unreliable. In the US, economists forecast (on average) that 8 million jobs would be lost in May. Instead there was a 2.5 million gain in jobs. Not a single economist surveyed by Bloomberg though there would be any gain at all (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-06/may-jo...). The hard data we have on GDP so far: Sweden's GDP grew by 0.1% in Q1 2020 (0.4% annualized), Germany and the UK's GDP fell.
The other evidence is that unemployment has risen in Sweden and spending in Denmark has only fallen 4 percentage points more than Sweden. But Denmark has propped up employment by "covering 75 to 90 percent of all worker salaries over the next three months, provided that companies refrain from layoffs."(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-econo...). And from the numbers in the article, Denmark's unemployment rate has still risen proportionally more. Granted, Sweden has very generous unemployment benefits, but I'm not aware of a similar layoff prevention program.
The NYT has fallen into the bad habit of writing to a narrative, conscious or unconscious, rather than investigating more honestly.
In this case they want to paint the alternative path as wrongheaded and foolhardy. I’m glad someone tried something different in light of a lack of hard evidence. Time will tell if one or the other was better, but at least we’ll have baselines to compare against.
Just because a few countries in Europe and the early big ones in China/SK have slowed down they act like it's over. Yet there's still plenty of very major outbreaks in South America, Middle East, India, Russia, south east Asia, some African. They all have upward hockey stick growth still. Not to mention the delayed US south/west wave.
It's far too early to pick winners/losers of COVID in the midst of the global peak, assuming this is actually near the peak. Let alone measuring the economic consequences.
Yup I found the overwhelmingly negative tone of this article off-putting. It doesn't quote any opposing viewpoints. It doesn't quote anybody actually living in Sweden, or any sort of public opinion polls on how Swedish people feel their government is handling things. It only compares Sweden's death rate to countries with lower rates (when countries with higher rates exist). And it seems to paint a straw man argument about what Sweden's reasons are for not implementing lockdowns (I don't think it was just about the economy).
It also doesn't delve very deeply into why Sweden's fatality rate is higher than average. It seems to imply that it's all because Sweden didn't implement forced lockdowns. But I am living in an area that also didn't implement forced lockdowns, and we have experienced virtually no deaths from covid in my city thus far. What measures specifically could Sweden have taken to save lives? And is there anything that they did well?
I have found a lot of the coverage on covid to be fairly sensationalist (ranging from "it's all a big hoax" to "the world as we know it has ended"). Does anyone have any suggestions for more rational, honest, and detailed coverage of covid?
The first image people are greeted with in the article says everything needed about the editorial nature of the article. It is:
It is taken of the area which has one of the lowest covid-19 death rates. Compared to its nearby city in Denmark it even has a significant lower rate of deaths.
It is taken over the wrong time period. Both nationally and locally in that area, the death rate is going down. The image is from a few weeks ago during the warm weather when the rate was almost the lowest point of the whole measure period of the pandemic. The trend in that region is still downwards.
It is the wrong demographic when talking about death counts. In Sweden the wast majority that died occurred in elderly care homes in low social economical areas, not young people on the beach located near expensive and hip restaurants in the second highest social economic area.
But it makes for a great narrative tool, which illustrates the editorial values of NYT.
There is actually a bit of a similar thing in Sweden where the government steps in and pays a large portion (roughly 90% maybe? a bit unsure since none in my immediate circle is affected), but only on the condition that you have taken some specific other measures. For example Volvo had to end the contract for like 5000 contractors to be able to get the benefits. source in swedish: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/5-000-konsulter-och-b...
I also remember that the government made it easier for people to join the A-Kassa, the state unemployment insurance. Normally you have to have been paying the insurance fee for half a year or something before you're eligible for payout but I believe that requirement was scrapped.
I work in e-commerce in Sweden and so far we're looking at 100%+ growth numbers for this year. It's crazy. I expect it to slow down towards the end of the year, but so far it's been crazy.
The main piece of evidence is that "Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent." Economic forecasts are ridiculously unreliable. In the US, economists forecast (on average) that 8 million jobs would be lost in May. Instead there was a 2.5 million gain in jobs. Not a single economist surveyed by Bloomberg though there would be any gain at all (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-06/may-jo...). The hard data we have on GDP so far: Sweden's GDP grew by 0.1% in Q1 2020 (0.4% annualized), Germany and the UK's GDP fell.
The other evidence is that unemployment has risen in Sweden and spending in Denmark has only fallen 4 percentage points more than Sweden. But Denmark has propped up employment by "covering 75 to 90 percent of all worker salaries over the next three months, provided that companies refrain from layoffs."(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-econo...). And from the numbers in the article, Denmark's unemployment rate has still risen proportionally more. Granted, Sweden has very generous unemployment benefits, but I'm not aware of a similar layoff prevention program.