Thanks for the kind words, amigadave!

I'm feeling about the same, maybe slightly worse but not at all that bad. Been little more than a week now. Or more, difficult to say exactly when it started. If this is as bad as it gets, then it's kind of OK. Not very fun, but absolutely tolerable. And it could be the flu, but I honestly don't think so. Not a cold either.


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Here the advice is indeed to stay at home if you are infected, but also to continue to go to work/school as long as you don't have any symptoms, even if family members of the household are infected.


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Schools are still open, no plans of closing them. The max size of public gatherings still lies at 500 people.

No travel bans, neither international nor domestic. I don't think they have ever practice quarantine on arrivals, in fact I don't think they screen the passengers either. They do put up posters in multiple languages at the arrivals of where to turn if you feel symptoms or develop symptoms later. But there is no testing anymore of people with symptoms, not of *anyone* except those in high-risk groups, health care staff and those with severe symptoms, so why should they test arrivals from abroad? I couldn't get tested myself if I wanted to, even if I put a pile of cash on the table. They would simply say: "Yes it's probably covid, act as if it would be, practice self-isolation and ride it out. Come back if it gets worse."

Yesterday they held a press conference. Many thought they would announce a reduction of the size of max gatherings, closure of schools, or whatever. But it was an announcement that restaurants were no longer allowed to take orders (for food or drinks) at the bar counter, that you are from now on only allowed to order from a waitress/waiter while seated at a table. Someone asked if buffets were to be banned, but not so, that's up to the restaurants to decide, but everyone should remember to keep 1.5-2 meters distance from other guests. In practice, nobody is serving any buffets anymore. And few people are visiting restaurants at all.

We have the Easter holiday coming up in a few weeks, and in conjunction with that there is a one week school break. Traditionally, many take this occasion to go to ski resorts in the mountains. They will not close the resorts and they say it's fine to go as long as you make sure to keep your distance to other people, and make sure you can travel home by your own means (or with the assistance of your own family) if you get ill, since you can't expect aid from local authorities and public services with limited resources and capacity. I doubt many will go this year though.


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I believe there will be many deaths, but another reason is that our healthcare system was at its brink before this even started, they could hardly cope with normal day-to-day operation in "peace time". And there were no preparedness for something like this. The protective gear was simply not there in enough quantities, etc.


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The funny part is they say the aim is exactly the opposite, they want to *delay* the peak as long as they can, meaning a longer outbreak but lower peak. But they are solely relying on people's earnest will to participate in disease control by taking responsibility of their own actions, instead of enforcing authoritative actions that they believe people will ignore or find ways to avoid. The idea is that we can only fight this if *everyone volunteer* to make necessary sacrifices in social contacts etc for a limited time. "Pull" instead of "Push", so to say. I heard some country banned people from going outside altogether, except from walking their dogs? Italy? Spain? Only to discover how resourceful dog-owners started to rent out their dogs to people wanting to go outside. Going outside is not a problem, and enforcing that kind of ban could be just for show from the authorities, a mean to show decisiveness to the people, but will end up having no real effect on the outbreak and causing other kinds of damage to the society instead.

Something that differs Sweden (or maybe Scandinavia as a whole, I don't know) from many other countries, especially the southern countries in Europe, is that we are much more solitary by nature. Almost antisocial, some would say. We keep to ourselves in tight circles. As awful as it may sound, we are relying more on strong, public institutions than our family, institutions that over the decades has replaced much of the needs of safety and protection that big families or even clans may provide when it comes to people of other origin. This can be something the authorities has factored in, when making decisions. In fact, now when things are starting to ramp up here, it seems to be an over-representation of infected (and deceased) Somalians residing in certain suburbs to Stockholm. Still too early to tell, but it could very well be that they have a different way of living, huge families (or even clans) living tightly together, sharing everything, participating in each other lives. We swedes don't do that.