Originally Posted by
aviation_enthus
It’s never as simple as the personal liberty VS lockdowns argument is put (by most people).
It's probably more correctly a personal liberty versus public health argument in that the lockdowns are being used to pursue public health outcomes. Thus it boils down to the discussion/debate that first started a few millennia ago when people first started organising themselves into societal groups - how you reconcile the trade-off between the individual and the group.
Unsurprisingly, some people are firm advocates for individual rights first, while others believe that the welfare of the group is more important. To tap Aurelius, it's the bee and the hive discussion. At the end of the day it comes down to personal values. And frankly who is anyone on this forum to tell anyone else that their values are wrong?
I think that it is fair to say that what some people see as an unreasonable imposition on civil liberties others see as a reasonable public health measure. Those pesky values again. You do you.
Originally Posted by
aviation_enthus
Even if we had followed a minimal restrictions approach and instead spent stacks of $$$ on health etc, business demand in various sectors would have dropped.
Trying to get good country-to-country spending comparisons is problematic for a number of reasons but Sweden's COVID spending in per capita terms appears to be not dissimilar to ours. As a proportion of GDP we have committed around 19 percent, a bit more than the UK, similar to Canada but significantly less than any of Japan, France or Germany.
In terms of how Sweden and Australia have ridden through COVID economically to date, we're doing better in terms of GDP growth (compared to Q4-19, our economy has actually grown to Q1-21; Sweden's (as are most developed countries') is still down) and unemployment (at 5.1 percent we're back to where we were coming into the pandemic whereas Sweden at 9.8 percent is stuck some 2+ percentage points higher than where their were coming in). Draw your own conclusions from that.