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Mammoth Springs

Saturday, May 9, 2020

Herd mentality

There is an interesting article at National Review, titled Let's talk about the Swedish Approach. It has become popular along the right side of the bandwidth to talk about things like herd immunity and the situation in Sweden.

One thing struck me as the most salient detail in the conversation.
As of this writing, Sweden has 24,623 cases of coronavirus and 3,040 deaths. Sweden has 2,438 cases per million people and 301 deaths per million people. The United States has 3,906 cases per million people . . . but only 232 deaths per million people.
My math is rusty but 232 over 301 equals what over a hundred? 77? So if my ratio skills are correct, their approach leads to approximately 23% more deaths per capita for their population.

Is that what we want? What are the advantages that I am missing? Is this like the let the wave wash over us and see who makes it approach?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh I certainly do not think their approach was sane from a preventative standpoint. But humans are not sane when it comes to required altruism. We become insular as the organism perceives oncoming risk.
I honestly do not how one should actually minimize risk in today's society particularly at a governmental level. We need a Hari Seldon right now. (Or 50 years ago in order to plan correctly)
RH

Scrota Voce said...

Let's save .01% of the population by destroying the lives of at least 25%.

Then we can ride to the rescue in November and blame it all on Trump.

We are bitchin' dudes.

Mike Love

Blue Heron said...

The most hated beach boy...