[conspire] Let's look at fluview

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> I found the following link from POTUS about Sweden.  My outspoken
> associate hasn't had a reply.  Trump says Sweden is paying heavily for
> not having a lockdown.
> https://www.newsweek.com/sweden-coronavirus-rate-1501250 

I hope people have learned to simply disregard what the Toddler says on
(at minimum) this entire topic.  Despite having top analysts briefing
him on all aspects of this threat since November 2019 in the
Presidential Daily Briefings and otherwise, he's for whatever reason 
just been a force for chaos alternating with obliviousness, and the wise
policy is, as Maddow advises, to disregard what the mouth says keep an
eye out, instead, for (rare, often deliberately quiet) Executive Branch
actions.

Concerning Sweden itself, as I implied the last time the subject arose
on Conspire, it'd be poor form for a Norwegian-American to mouth off
about Sweden, so I'm slow to do so.  (The two neighbouring countries
still have some soreheadedness left over from their acrimonious
1814-1905 shotgun marriage.)

I remember, some weeks ago, that Sweden's overall policy was to avoid
mandated shutdowns and simply state that they trusted Swedes to be
responsible and mitigate risks on their own.  That sounded
overconfident, but I didn't want to dwell on that, and in the end the
pessimists seem to have been right, if one can trust the figures for
Sweden versus its neighbours.

I wouldn't say more without some informed analysis from Swedish friends,
if only because the miasma of misinformation and disinformation (e.g.,
deliberate forgeries circulated for partisan reasons) is becoming as
thick as pea-soup fog (on coronavirus matters), and I'm distrusting and
disregarding anything not fully sourced and fact-checked.

And in particular, I'm assuming at least an 80% bullshit percentage on
_anything_ lobbed around by Internet forwarding -- absent careful
checking.