Jens: People are fairly relaxed and confident in the approach over here I think. It's impossible to speak for everyone of course, and I know there are a lot of upset people who scream that we have to shut everything down and start electing fascists who aren't afraid of doing the hard work and if we don't we'll turn into Italy, but there's a lot fewer of them now than there was a month ago. The idea that the current approach wouldn't hurt the national economy is frankly ridiculous. The last time mass unemployment was this high in Sweden was towards the end of the 1800s when there was a literal famine that made ten percent of the population set sail for America.
Like I wrote earlier, and I don't know what it's like anywhere else, but I think it mostly comes back to how open they are with the information. They explain decisions, they make research publicly available, and they talk a lot about underlying reasons and inconsistencies that make it difficult to compare some places to others. They're also being completely honest with the fact that these are by nature very imprecise predictions that often change from day to day, which I think is the hallmark of a good scientist. I think the narrative has become "Sweden refuse to moderate their approach," but the reality is the opposite. A lot of things change constantly. There's a big openness for new information and findings in general and I think that's a very good thing.
The public have a high respect in general for science and experts, whereas they have very little respect for politicians, so it's probably a good thing that Folkhälsomyndigheten have been the main deliverer of information rather than the prime minister. We have fairly strict laws that forbid the government from asserting political pressure on the public health institute too... probably because they imagined situations exactly like this when the laws were written.
I think unlike in some places there has never been any illusion about how bad things would get, everyone's acutely aware that a lot of people will die no matter what, because, again, they were open with that simple fact from the beginning, without downplaying the responsibility of individual people. You still get assholes who go on their ski vacations and whatnot despite being told not to, but in the main we seem to have slowed down the spread successfully (touch wood).
According to the state epidemiologist the ICU cases have actually decreased over the past week, which apparently doesn't show up in the statistics because they don't report publicly on people being released from hospitals, but it's a trend they've been tracking internally. I have no idea whether it'll hold up or not, but there's data coming through right now which suggests that there has been a traceable effect so far from the measures undertaken. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on because there's a general sentiment that we're edging steadily closer to the peak of the curve.
