In today's video we're gonna clear up some misconceptions about how Sweden-
-is handling the Coronavirus.
If you're not familiar with our channel-
-I'm an American. Julia is Swedish and we live together in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Most of our videos are usually like comedy, sort of funny or we hope so at least.
Today's video is going to be a little bit more somber and serious.
Because the coronavirus is a tragedy.
I mean, as of this recording on April 18th, 150,000 people have died around the world.
So it's very tragic and very serious.
But it seems like...
...Sweden is kind of getting roasted in the international media.
"Crisis? What crisis? In Sweden things look almost normal"
"The lockdown in Sweden"
"In Sweden they've taken a different approach"
"Stockholm has so far stopped short of introducing a lockdown"
"Spring sunshine in Stockholm, but life goes on much as normal"
"People are already suffering, death rates Sweden is accelerating faster than other Scandinavian countries"
The media is portraying Sweden like this rogue nation, that's not...
...adhering to any of the recommendations by the World Health Organization, etc.
Recently you heard Trump say that it's a disaster over here, the coronavirus.
"Now they talk about Sweden..."
"But Sweden is suffering very gravely. You know that right? Sweden did the herd, they called it the herd."
Sweden's suffering very very badly.
My friends and family back home are texting me and saying like, "Oh my god. What's it like in Sweden?"
"We hear it's just death and destruction everywhere".
It's funny how the media can really get to people.
But we just want to clear up these misconceptions and talk about the truth-
-on how Sweden is handling the coronavirus.
We just want to start by saying that we are no experts in this.
This is just our personal opinions and our thoughts.
Listen to your own country and your own authority and stuff.
And don't listen to what we say, just listen to our thoughts.
Honor the rules, laws and regulations put in place by your country.
Like Julia said, we're not public health experts. We're not doctors or scientists.
We're just strangers you met on the Internet.
Take everything we say with a grain of salt but let's just jump right in.
People are saying that Sweden isn't taking this seriously.
How would you describe Sweden's approach to the coronavirus?
Obviously we're taking this as serious as any other country.
It's not like our Health Minister is smarter than the other health ministers in the other countries.
What it starts with is that, Sweden as a country, we trust the government very highly-
-and the government trusts us very highly, the people of Sweden.
I think that's where it starts.
There's a certain community feeling in Sweden and all of the Nordic countries for that matter.
Like the social contract between the government and the people is very strong.
That's because there's zero corruption in the government.
And people generally feel that the government has everyone's best interests in mind.
As opposed to the U.S where you do not trust the government.
You think the government's up to get you.
That's why you have to have guns in case the government is coming after you.
Generally when they give us recommendations, we follow.
But again, there's always gonna be a black sheep in the population that's not gonna follow the rules or-
-the recommendations.
I feel like most people do follow it to an extent.
The government here has recommended social distancing.
Well for starters, most Swedes social distance anyway.
I forget what the exact statistic is, but a lot of Swedes live alone.
Whereas in the U.S you would have roomates if you're our age or younger.
You'll live with a couple friends in an apartment.
That's extremely rare in Sweden. You do not live with friends.
I know two people that are roommates, the rest of my friends own or rent apartments.
We do social distance.
It's not like we're meeting a group of 40 friends, or at least we're not doing it.
Our friends are taking this seriously.
We don't go to clubs because the clubs are closed.
Restaurants are open but they have taken an approach where they close off every-
-second table in the restaurants so you can't be close to other people.
They offer free hand sanitizer.
The gyms open, the public transportation are open.
But the gyms were closed.
They were closed for a week or so, but now they're open, I was at the gym this morning.
The libraries are open, the public transportation is open and functioning.
I guess you could say that people here aren't as afraid as they are in other countries.
Talking with my brother back home for example, he's fully spooked by this. I think the media's got to him.
Actually, I wanted to show some footage of him cleaning his groceries with plastic gloves on.
With Clorox pads.
People in the U.S are a lot more afraid.
Although that's starting to change and I sort of predicted this.
I think that when people are locked up for too long, and they start losing their jobs and have no income-
-then people are gonna start protesting the lockdown and that's exactly what we're seeing now in the U.S.
That just happened this weekend.
So I think that's why Sweden's approach actually works really well.
Good analogy is that, let's take a freeway for example.
The normal speed might be 80 mph.
If you want it to be very safe, you could drop it down to 10 mph.
Although people aren't gonna adhere to that speed limit for very long.
They're gonna get frustrated and then start speeding again.
What Sweden has done is taking it down to like 40 mph.
You know, they haven't fully quarantined everyone, fully locked everyone down.
They have taken precautions, but they're taking precautions that we can follow for much longer.
Yeah.
It's a lot easier to go at 40 mph for a longer period of time than-
-slowing everyone down to 10 mph.
So I think that's a good analogy.
"This level of measures that we have in Sweden-
-there is no problem for us to keep it running for months."
"Closing schools more stringent measures like closing borders-
-you cannot do that for months or years ahead-
-but what we're doing is Sweden we can continue doing for a long time and I think that's going to prove to be-
-very very important in the long run."
When this all started I read a lot of American news and they were all talking about flattening the curve.
But if you think about it, if you lock everyone in for two months-
-then you're gonna flatten the curve and then you're gonna let everyone out again.
The people that haven't seen each other or being around people for two months.
They're all gonna get sick and then the curve is gonna go up again.
You're shifting the curve.
Yeah, and then do you have to lock everyone in again for two months?
Then it's gonna go down and then it's gonna keep going like that.
That's what we're seeing in in South Korea and I think Taiwan.
When you lock everyone in quarantine and then you let everyone out again-
-there's gonna be a second wave, there's gonna be a second search in infections because no one has-
-developed any sort of immunity while they were locked away.
The reason Sweden hasn't had to have a full quarantine is because the healthcare system is not at capacity.
They can handle more people coming into the ICU, more people going on ventilators.
So the curve is flattened in Sweden and if you look at the daily death chart-
-you can see that it peaked around eight or nine days ago. It's sort of plateaued and going back down.
And that is pretty interesting.
My friends were predicting that there's gonna be a massive spike in deaths and that Sweden was-
-gonna be done for and it's proved just the opposite.
Sweden strategy is like a herd immunity. I don't want to use that word-
-I'm reluctant to use the word herd immunity because it's getting such a bad rap.
Basic general idea is that you let the young and healthy get infected and they overcome it-
-without any hospitalization and then they develop immunity.
They can't be infected again.
And then when the virus has no new people to infect it slowly dies out.
I just also want to say that, when we talked about the hospitals and stuff-
-we respect all the Swedish hospitals and the workers there. I know they have more to do than usual.
A lot more to do.
But like we said they are not at full capacity just yet.
I'm really curious about how the other countries in Europe are handling it, the other Nordic countries.
I know Denmark's closed the border of Sweden.
If you live in a country in Europe or actually anywhere around the world-
-tell us in the comments section below how the situation is there.
I'm really curious to read the comments and see how everyone's reacting to it-
-in the different countries around the world.
So, please leave a comment below and tell us how it's like in your country.
After hearing our thoughts, do you agree with us? Do you think we're completely wrong?
If you agree with us, give us a thumbs up.
If you disagree. Give us a thumbs down and that'll be a good voting measure.
I think we're gonna have a lot of thumbs down.
I do too, but I think more thumbs up, we'll see.
That's what this whole thing comes down to is:
Do you shut down the economy completely like the U.S has done or do you leave the essential sectors-
-still up and running and try to lessen the blow because I mean right now in the U.S-
-I think the latest report is over 20 million unemployed.
Crazy numbers.
Facing a bigger crisis than the Great Depression of 1929.
I don't know. I mean you have to weigh the risks I guess.
Is it worth crashing the whole economy and making the whole country collapse?
Because most of us are we gonna handle the virus well.
Some people will have a cold-
-some people will have fever but the most people will be fine.
They're saying 40% of people are asymptomatic meaning they show no symptoms at all.
And if you look at the people that are mostly passing away from this, tragically it's the elderly.
It's something like 86 % of the people that have passed away in Sweden or-
-over age 60 and also have a pre-existing condition.
In my opinion and again, we're not scientists. We're not doctors.
I would say the best strategy is to have a mandatory quarantine or lockdown of people over age 70.
Then let the young and healthy go out and build up immunity.
That's why Sweden actually does have a high death rate per capita.
If you look at the amount of people that have died and divide that by the population to get the per capita death.
Sweden is pretty high up on the list.
Not as high as Italy, not as high as Spain, not as high as Belgium or France.
But it is pretty high, higher than the U.S.
That's actually due in part to an outbreak in the elderly homes in Stockholm.
Out of the 1500 deaths in Sweden, something like over 80% are in Stockholm County.
It's because there was an outbreak in the nursing homes there, sadly.
I think that's what it counts the high death rate.
I think so too.
But speaking of America again. I think a lot comes down to the media as well.
They're making a profit of this, of course.
They are a company just like anyone else who wants to make money.
Posting pictures with doctors and everyone with this like full on mask.
That scares people and that makes people...
I partly blame the American media for...
...making a big, I mean...
It's tough to say because it is a very such serious situation-
A lot of the headlines you see are sensationalist and you have to remember that these news outlets-
-like you said, they make money from every time you click on their article.
The more people that read the articles the more ads they can sell and the more money they make.
So they'll say just about anything to get you to click on an article.
We're not saying that they're wrong, but we're saying that they are using words to make you scared.
They exaggerate a lot of things and make it sound worse than it is.
The Swedish media is a little bit less sensational.
So that's why I don't think people are as depressed or anxious or scared about the whole situation.
Honestly the mood here in Sweden is like...
...it's almost business as usual.
I'm riding my bike today. People are out the park with their kids.
The restaurants are open.
It's sunny here in Sweden. And when the sun comes out:
The Swedes go out.
The Swedes are going out. They've endured six to eight months of long dark cold winter.
When it's blue skies...
You can't be inside as a Swede, I'm sorry to say and it sounds terrible.
I really think that you just have to weigh the risks.
It's extremely unlikely that if someone like you or I got the coronavirus that we would die from it.
We'd probably get pretty ill. But we don't come into contact with elderly people-
-so we have really no risk of spreading it to anyone who it's life-threatening to.
You gotta weigh the pros and cons.
You can't shut down the economy. You can't stop living life.
Obviously we're suffering too, but I think Sweden doesn't want the economy to collapse.
So we'll see what happens.
We just wanted to clear up these misconceptions about how Sweden's just "there's no worries here and-
-it's a free-for-all".
This is not over yet, we could be wrong or we could be right.
We might look back at this video a year from now and be like "Damn"
"What the heck were we thinking, this is completely wrong and weird".
Or we're right like no one knows really.
We just have to wait it out and see.