Overacting vs stoicism

BEFORE getting to today’s column, I recommend three articles. See Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times of June 15, “Market madness in the pandemic.” Also, Bloomberg, June 16, “As China fights second wave, Taiwan starts stockpiling again.” One of the messages of the latter article is that successful countries do not just learn, they anticipate and plan as Taiwan is doing.  Bloomberg, June 17, “Sweden proves surprisingly slow in achieving herd immunity.”  Sweden resorted to the lightest of measures, staying mostly open. The article quotes Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist who is at a loss to explain why the trends in immunity have been so slow. A recent poll shows considerable backlash and that most Swedes have lost faith in their country’s strategy to fight the virus with only 14 percent immunity to date and 5,000 deaths in a country with a population of 10 million.  By contrast, Norway with 5.4 million population has 242 deaths and the Philippines with a population of just under 110 million as of Wednesday has 1,018 deaths.

The facts are clear. As my favorite of many Yogi Berra quotes goes, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”