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“But peer into any cafe in the capital, Stockholm, and groups of two or more people can be seen casually dining and enjoying cappuccinos. Playgrounds are full of running, screaming children. Restaurants, gyms, malls and ski slopes have thinned out but are still in use.The state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said in an interview that Sweden’s strategy is based on science and boiled down to this: “We are trying to slow the spread enough so that we can deal with the patients coming in.”
“In explaining Sweden’s current strategy, experts point to other underlying factors: The country has high levels of trust, according to the historian Lars Tragardh, and a strict law in the Constitution prohibits the government from meddling in the affairs of the administrative authorities, such as the public health agency.”
More to the article. Just quoted a couple notable sections.
In case anyone was wondering what the feeding trough looks like in the stimulus bill ironically called the CARES Act. Keep in mind the portions labeled as loans for small businesses (up to 500 employees) can convert to grants i.e. free money if certain conditions are met. Because the SBA, who is notoriously slow at anything, is handling the small business portion it’s debatable what, if any, help they will get in a timely manner.
Also, because Treasury is handling the “big” corporation money they’re able to “leverage” that amount up to 10x. Likely I’m glossing over things.
To be fair, Capitalism has been coming through. The shelves at my local Mariano's are mostly normal with regard to bread, soup, meat, liquor, etc. There was even some toilet paper on the shelf last I checked, which was a few days ago.
Capitalism would have worked fine if there weren't laws prohibiting "price gouging" which is a made up term used to demonize short-term free market price adjustments dictated by supply and demand curve imbalances.
How would that run on supplies have gone if the short term price on water had doubled and the short term price of toilet paper quadrupled overnight in the first days of consumer panic?
Grandma might have had to pay four times the price for a sleeve of toilet paper that she definitely needed, but the toilet paper would have been there, because the previous grandma would have balked at the price and not bought ten sleeves of toilet paper.
To be fair, Capitalism has been coming through. The shelves at my local Mariano's are mostly normal with regard to bread, soup, meat, liquor, etc. There was even some toilet paper on the shelf last I checked, which was a few days ago.
Our big issue at the moment is availability of delivery drivers for groceries. Since my special lady friend has RA and is on immuno suppresant drugs, I don't particularly care to go out in public either and possibly bring it home. Instacart was so overwhelmed on Saturday, you couldn't even use the app, it just wouldn't let you log in. Shipt let me fill up an entire cart, get through to click "Place Order" to tell us there were no available slots and to check back later.
And for all but a few days, it's been raining and/or cloudy the last nearly 3 weeks since we have both been working from home.
We both just really want to go to our favorite pizza place, sit down and have a beer and a slice or two.
At least the liquor store we frequent is able to do deliveries for a few more weeks thanks to an exception from the ABLE Commission. And using Skype has been able to keep her appointments with both her regular doctor and RA specialist last week.
Our big issue at the moment is availability of delivery drivers for groceries. Since my special lady friend has RA and is on immuno suppresant drugs,... And using Skype has been able to keep her appointments with both her regular doctor and RA specialist last week.
You wouldn't be having these problems with socialized medicine like they have in Cuba or Canada... is it too late to give Bernie the nod?
03-28-2020, 12:25 PM
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