I saw on twitter Steve Dace compared Michigan to Sweden. He said they have roughly the same number of people. He acknowledged that Sweden had less per square mile but said their biggest city was bigger than Michigan's. They both had their first case at roughly the same time. Yet Sweden's numbers were less than Michigan's.
Some of the responses were interesting. One said Sweden's unemployment is up to 10% so they are struggling economically too. A few talked about the health care being worse here (not sure I buy that being a valid reason because there isn't much of a treatment for COVID yet and the quality of healthcare has nothing to do with the number of positive cases). A couple people mentioned that a lot of people fly into Michigan from China and speculated that there probably isn't a lot of China to Sweden travel.
In my opinion, the last one is the major reason why the US got hit so hard and places like Sweden haven't. Same with places like Italy, France, and the UK. Those are places you would guess have travel from China. How many seeds get planted to start an outbreak is a very significant number for how fast a virus spreads. They should probably take a closer look at which places are hit the hardest compared to which places have the most travel to China and Europe. I would be surprised if there wasn't a pretty big connection.
But either way, think about what Dace is implying. He's basically saying our numbers would be better without social distancing. That's a ridiculous assessment. Clearly there are more important factors going on with Sweden. Otherwise, that would mean it's true that there would be less spread if you continue to go about your life than if you social distance. There is literally no way that's true. You can't spread a virus more by being around each other less. Can you?
