Juno News - November 16, 2020


Let's discuss Sweden's approach to the coronavirus


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

196.4955

Word Count

699

Sentence Count

38


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I want to take a moment to address what we talk about when we talk about Sweden and that country's
00:00:10.800 approach to the coronavirus. Based on a lot of the media coverage that we get about Sweden here
00:00:15.840 in Canada and English language media, you would think that there's two extremes going on. There
00:00:20.240 are responsible countries who are locking down and doing restrictions, and then there's Sweden,
00:00:24.960 which doesn't care, and they care more about, oh, I don't know, business and the stock market or
00:00:29.680 something so they're not bringing in any lockdowns, and that's kind of the choice. And you can also
00:00:34.720 look at the different data from all around the world, and you can really pick and choose as to
00:00:38.880 whether or not Sweden's doing excellent or they're doing terrible, because there's some countries that
00:00:42.560 they are doing much better than, there are other countries that they are doing much worse than,
00:00:46.320 and so forth. You can say, oh, the economy actually isn't doing amazing in Sweden, which is true,
00:00:51.040 because, well, all the other countries around them are suffering, so that has that sort of trickle-down
00:00:55.360 effect, and it hampers their economy as well. So people are going to play these pick-and-choosy
00:00:59.760 games when it comes to Sweden to say whatever they want out of the numbers, and you can rearrange
00:01:04.720 the months and so forth, get the figures you want. But one thing that is not debatable is the
00:01:10.480 overarching guiding philosophy that they're doing in Sweden. And this is a part that I don't think is
00:01:16.320 discussed enough. And what guides them is individual responsibility, personal responsibility. They have
00:01:24.320 restrictions in Sweden. People are wearing masks. There's a whole bunch of things that people are
00:01:29.760 not doing because of coronavirus. There's a whole bunch of non-essential activities that are not going
00:01:35.120 on and so forth. But here's the thing, that's voluntary choices. They believe in massive public
00:01:42.320 education, they have trust in each other, strong civics, and their officials are out there and they're
00:01:46.800 saying, look, here's the problem with coronaviruses, indoor group gatherings and so forth, not wearing a mask,
00:01:52.720 so here's what we really urge you guys to do. Look at what you're doing in your life. Look at your
00:01:58.080 activities and so forth. And please, we encourage you, bring these precautions into mind as you go
00:02:03.040 about your daily life. And many, many people are doing just that. I guess if there are some
00:02:09.120 restrictions that they feel like, look, this is too far. It's just going to destroy my business or my
00:02:13.600 livelihood. I just, I can't actually do those restrictions. Well, then they don't. And then they're
00:02:18.480 trying to find that happy medium, that balance. But here, we have these blunt restrictions where
00:02:22.960 we say, like we have said in Ontario, all right, we're reopening the gyms. And you know what, that
00:02:28.400 that cavernous two-story good life? Only 10 people at a time can be in there. And you know that tiny
00:02:34.880 little micro boutique gym? Only 10 people at a time can be in there, even though there's only ever five
00:02:40.480 people in there in the first place. These sort of bizarre blunt restrictions that are micromanaged,
00:02:45.840 top-down edicts that may not actually work. And we're not even sure why we've been given them
00:02:50.720 because we're just instructed them from on high. We're not given that personal responsibility
00:02:55.760 conversation. But in Sweden, they're breaking it all down for the populace. And while the folks are
00:03:00.640 listening and they are actually bringing in their own voluntary measures. So I think that's the thing
00:03:05.600 we have to find a better balance of here in Canada. And also just something we have to talk about
00:03:09.680 more when we talk about these other jurisdictions. There's a whole lot of things we can do right now that
00:03:14.880 kind of resemble lockdowns and activities and restrictions that actually wouldn't bring
00:03:19.520 undue harm to people that we can voluntarily do right now. And I imagine many people are as well.
00:03:25.280 It's just a lot of those top-down aggressive government lockdown people,
00:03:29.920 they're just refusing to acknowledge that. And I think that's a shame.