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21

In Macedonia, they made things very strict.

The school was canceled, one week ago we moved to online classes.

Most of the coffee shops, bars, restaurants are closed. Some of them are permitted to deliver food or offer takeaway options. Generally speaking, pizza delivery companies are doing well.

Supermarkets are open, but there are limitations on how many people can enter.

Most importantly, all of our borders and airports are closed, nobody can leave nor enter the country without special permission. The borders are open for cargo, though. If I am correct, we have a deal for agricultural trading with Serbia, so basic things like wheat can be imported from them.

There is a curfew, or as we call it “police hour”. On workdays, we are not allowed to be outside of our homes between 9 PM-5 AM. However, on weekends, we are not allowed to hang out between 4 PM and 5 AM. Which sucks.

Old people are allowed to shop only for groceries and go to the pharmacies, between 5 AM and 11 AM (my grandpa doesn’t care and he goes out when it is illegal for him). While people younger than 18 years are allowed to move between 11 AM and 5 PM.

The police are issuing warnings and fines. Basically, the law works at the moment - and usually, the law doesn’t work… I think our government is scared if the infection spreads like in Italy, the health system is going to collapse. So they must be strict.

Sweden has a great healthcare system, they can handle many cases. I assume that’s why they don’t bother much.

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22

Population of Macedonia = 2.077 million
Population of Sweden = 10.12 million
Population of England = 55.98 million
Population of USA = 327.2 million

You’re trying to compare apples and oranges. The sheer difference in population, population density etc. means that what may work in one country may well not work in another - there are just too many variables for a simple comparison of x = good, y = bad.

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23

I was about to post the same thing, but you ran faster. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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24

True. Sweden and Denmark are fairly similar, though, which is why it’s interesting the two have employed very different strategies. Sweden already has twice as many Covid deaths than Denmark, too.

It seems as though Denmark has opted to stem the spread by locking everything down, whilst Sweden has opted for the herd immunity strategy, which both the Dutch and Brits tried.

I have noticed more and more Swedish academics expressing skepticism on social media. I’m interested to see how the situation develops over there. The Swedes do seem to have their heads screwed on, so I don’t want to doubt them.

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25

Even just how people live and what religion they follow can make a big difference. Multi-generational households are being far more affected than those where it’s a smaller family group.

I won’t go into any religious details because each to their own obviously, but if you check on Google I’m sure you can find the info if you’re keen.

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26

Not only those parameters have to be taken into account, but age groups and health conditions, as well.

As for 2018, this was Sweden’s age distribution:

  • 0-14 years: 17.54% (male 904,957 /female 855,946)

  • 15-24 years: 11.06% (male 573,595 /female 537,358)

  • 25-54 years: 39.37% (male 2,005,422 /female 1,947,245)

  • 55-64 years: 11.67% (male 588,314 /female 583,002)

  • 65 years and over: 20.37% (male 946,170 /female 1,098,986)

Source: Sweden Age structure - Demographics

If I find statistics about health, I’ll post them.

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27

@Starrynight - so many variables! :slightly_smiling_face:

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28

That’s one advantage the Swedes have over us Brits. They have many more single-resident households.

That’ll benefit Sweden, too. It seems more older males die from the illness. :grimacing:

That might help Africa deal with the crisis if it hits there. Many African countries have a very young population. The average age of the Nigerian population, for example, is 18. We’d all be OAPs if we moved there! :sweat_smile:

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29

Even when it’s said that the most vulnerable is the group above 65 years, if you sum up that group with the group between 55 and 64, it will only make 32% of the country’s population at risk by age (i.g. 3.500.000 people aprox.).

That means that the worst scenario, if 0.1% of them would be infected and all go critical, will roughly represent 3.500 people having to be treated all at the same time.

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30

I don’t see how that would benefit them. :flushed: :thinking:

Could you explain me, please? I really don’t understand. :grimacing:

Yes, poor Africa has young population, bad bad sanitary conditions, population’s bad health and undernourishment play against them.

For the body to have a strong immune system, it needs to eat properly and healthy. Unhealthy people is also a vulnerable group.

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31

Yeah, that’s the downside. :confused:

If males are much more likely to die from the virus, it helps if a country has a balanced population or even a female majority.

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32

At that age, it really makes no difference. Seldom men over 60 years have babies. Not that they can’t, obviously :see_no_evil:. They are just in low demand among women in childbearing age. :see_no_evil: :grimacing: Unless, of course, those men are bathing in money or political/economical power. :sweat_smile:

33

I didn’t mean that the older men would have to repopulate with younger women. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be called the coronavirus but the men’s dream virus! :joy:

I meant that if 70% of deaths are males, statistically, you’d have fewer deaths if you had a balanced or female-majority population than if you had a male-majority population.

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34

:flushed: Ooooops, I definitely didn’t understand what you meant. :see_no_evil: :sweat_smile:

If you check the numbers above, you can see that their distribution by gender is more or less balanced in all groups. So, men dying on the most vulnerable ones will have impact on pensions (less pensions to pay), but not on labour, since most of them would already be retired.

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35

Might have more of an impact on the children and grandchildren left with an extra space at the dinner table on a Sunday.

Every number is a person. My local hospital lost an ENT consultant yesterday. 55 with children who aren’t yet adults. That’s a family devastated. :slightly_frowning_face:

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36

Very sad stuff. :slightly_frowning_face:

That’s why we clapped them the other day. Everyone in the NHS is doing great work in a dangerous environment.

Not for the first time, I must add! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Anyway, to kind of get back on topic after I derailed the thread, my mum’s doing quite a lot of work from home, mainly courses. She recently completed one on FGM and has today started a new one on mental illness in children. Online learning is really coming into its own now.

She’s not a freelancer, but I thought I’d share another story about how people are working/staying employed during the crisis.

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37

I’d have to disagree with you slightly. My personal point of view is that in the western democracies, implementing a curfew would represent an unpopular opinion. As you said, you are used to freedom, more than we are.

I’d say culture has more to do with different approaches, than the population number. China has 1.3 billion people and they managed to do a lockdown and heavy restrictions. However, they have a regime so they can do that. Imagine if in the UK, a policeman beats you and forces you to self-isolate.

Writer posted videos from India, the Indian police are going into mosques - and beat everyone as they don’t follow the protocol for public gatherings.

But yea, population number and population structure are some of the variables.

Sweden has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. They have “spare” hospital beds, they have many doctors. While Italy had shortages of both. That’s another variable.

What’s important for all of us, is to self-isolate as much as we can, keep social distancing - and hope that we can’t get infected.

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38

Also, there is no right or wrong approach. Both could work.

If you a poor country like Macedonia, that has shortages of medical equipment and a huge brain-drain of doctors and other medical personnel. You can never implement something like Sweden implemented. You are going to cause :poop:storm. From what I read, we have only 8 respirators in the entire county at the moment.

Hence, the best reason is a curfew, draconian measures and limiting the freedom of the people.

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39

They’re now talking of up to 6 months here. Mental health will be in tatters by the end of it. It simply won’t work.

Even during WW2 (no, I don’t remember it!) there was no restriction on movement as we have now - restaurants were open, travel to the seaside was allowed etc. We can’t do any of that now, and I sure as hell can’t self-isolate in my house for 6 months without seeing anybody else. The divorce rate would be appalling as well. 88 couples in Wuhan immediately filed for divorce and theirs was only weeks.

Yes,I understand the need to self-isolate etc. but there are limits. We’re not a lab experiment.

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40

I said that’s the best approach for a country as Macedonia - that doesn’t have the necessary resources to fight an epidemic. Those measures would slow down the progress of the pandemic.

6 months! That’s almost jail-like.

By the way, here is my city during curfew hours:

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