The GPL is a License, Not a Contract - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031214210634851

<comment><USER2> The "you'll be forced to give away the code" fallacy is not just FUD spread by GPL haters. I've seen plenty of GPL advocates make the same remark, except they say it's a good thing.

I mention this because the linked article strongly implies that only evildoers would ever spread untruths about the GPL. The GPL is long and complex and the FSF's own guidelines to "clarify" things are anything but clear.

<comment><USER3> I find the FSF FAQ about the GPL (<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html>) extraordinarily clear. Have you read it? It covers lot of the common questions people ask, including how GPL and non-GPL code interact from a legal perspective.

I've pretty much always found that every GPL argument (and I've dealt with a lot of them, having worked with GPL-licensed code in commercial products for over a dozen years) is settled by simply pointing someone to the correct portion of the FSF documentation.

Yes, Open Source and Free Software fans often don't understand the license or its implications, and more people are woefully ignorant of its meaning and purpose than actually understand it, but I don't believe the blame can be placed on the FSF documentation on the subject. As licenses go, it's pretty plainly spoken, and as clarification of licenses go, the FSF goes into extensive detail for anyone that wants to actually look into it rather than starting flame wars based on whatever crazy notion someone has about the GPL and what they _want_ it to mean.

I really don't think the blame can be placed on the FSF in this regard. People just don't RTFM, especially TFM for licenses.

<comment><USER2> That is the document I'm talking about. I think their answers to questions about derivative works and whatnot (basically the "how do I violate the GPL without getting caught?" questions) are not entirely forthcoming. I can't fault them too much for this, as providing a truthful and complete answer would amount to being a guide to circumventing the GPL which is not in their interest, but the questions and answers are carefully phrased to avoid answering the _real_ question you're probably asking.

There is more wiggle room than the FSF would like people to believe (although it's probably also less wiggle room than those people hope for).

<comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm just a GPL fanboy, but I don't see how it's a failing of the FAQ to provide a very clear, and understandable, path to not violating the license. And, I don't see how documenting a strict and good faith approach to following the license is in any way in conflict with the original article.

If you read the FAQ (and the license), and follow the terms clearly laid out therein, you can't possibly be in violation of the license and you can't possibly put yourself in a situation where you accidentally force your code to become Free Software (though that's a nearly impossible outcome, even if you _don't_ understand the GPL on any level, which is the point of the original article).

The FAQ even _truthfully_ covers the situations wherein a company might want to use the GPL for a Free Software version of their code while also retaining copyright and offering other licenses (I've had to refer to this particular FAQ many times in flame wars about my own products over the years, since I always hold the copyright on the products I'm dual-licensing, and I use the GPL for the Open Source releases), and while the ethical position of the FSF often creeps into legal discussion, the facts are still quite clear.

I'm not sure I understand why the "real question" would be "how can I use this code without distributing it under the same terms I received it under?" Aren't we assuming good faith on the part of the "victim" of the GPL?

Frankly, all the flame wars about the GPL and the FSF always seem motivated by something other than lack of clarity about the license. They seem based on disagreements with the motives of the FSF, and I find it disingenuous to make it about the license (which is clear to most people who actually read it, and among the best documented software licenses in the world for those who can't grasp its nuances merely from the license itself). If you don't like the Free Software concept, and think BSD or public domain or something else is better for you, or your business, or your customers, or whoever, then say so. Don't argue that the GPL is incomprehensible or the FSF is trying to hide facts about the GPL (the documentation for the GPL v3 is very enlightening and transparent about loopholes in v2 they've tried to close and their reasoning for the changes and additions to the license), as it really isn't.

<comment><USER4> I think you nailed it in the last paragraph. Saving it for use later (with proper credits, ofcourse).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article starts off reasonably. The first sentence pulls you in, describing the case you fear most: you have "inadvertently" incorporated GPL code into your proprietary code.

But by the time it gets to the conclusion,you, the inadvertent infringer have become a thief. If found to be infringing, "you do have a choice under the GPL license: you can stop using the stolen code and write your own, or you can decide you'd rather release under the GPL."

Hey! The presumption of the article was that I inadvertently infringed. It was an accident. "Stolen" has a different connotation.

If I inadvertently infringed, I might have peppered that GPL code throughout miles of my own code. The "choice" might be no choice at all, in practical terms. Hey, you could always choose to go out of business.

This article reinforces the claim it purports to refute: that infringers "can be forced to release their proprietary code under the GPL".

No defending infringers mind you. Just saying, the article seems to confirm that the FUD isn't FUD after all.

<comment><USER6> How many programmers you know would accidentally include GPL'ed code into proprietary apps that get sold to other people? Is there any documented case of such accident?

<comment><USER5> I think, a lot. Here's a nifty little FFT code. Hey FFT's are kind of generic, right? This one's only 40 lines of C. I'll just copy and paste this one little function. Nobody'll ever know.

Or maybe nothing so complex as an FFT. Maybe it's a little code for charting. Who knows. Developer picks it up a snippet off the net somewhere, and it appears in your code base.

Then there's "derived works". Developer uses some working code snippet as a starting point, transforms it, specializes it, does a lot of work to it, but it's still derived work. I don't think developers think of it as plagiarism. Just "freedom". ;) But developers don't always protect the best interests of the company.

<comment><USER7> Copying code is never an accident. It is always on purpose, whether done in ignorance or not.

<comment><USER6> Labeling C and V with "copy" and "paste" may have made such accidents easier...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bare licenses (e.g., a license that is not really a contract) are revokable. If Groklaw and Moblen are right, the copyright owner of GPLv2 code can un-GPL the code. This is covered in Rosen's book on open source licensing, and is one of the reasons he recommends making sure your software licenses are in fact contracts.

<comment><USER9> In such a case promissory estoppel would be a very good defense. Distributing your work under the GPL is a strong indication that you intend others to build on it, and their reliance on this is reasonable.

<comment><USER8> In which case you've essentially got a contract, with promissory estoppel serving as a substitute for consideration.

It's interesting that if one searches, in either law textbooks or in the case law, there just isn't much that makes a distinction between licenses and contracts outside of real property law, where they are usually talking about bare licenses. In almost all other contexts, the terms are largely used interchangeably, although it seems license is more likely to be used when it is a one to many arrangement (e.g., one party is making essentially the same contract with numerous other parties) and contract is more likely when it is one to one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, it's annoying if I'm installing something and the installer treats the GPL (or MITL) as a EULA. I don't have to accept/agree to the terms to use it.

<comment><USER11> You _do_ require a license from the copyright owner to use the software. The installer is just informing you of one such license that is available to you, and the conditions of that license. It is also usually the _only_ such license, unless you have negotiated separately with the copyright owner.

<comment><USER12> This is one point over which there is some controversy. I would argue that a copyright owner merely distributing software gives one the right to use that software as it was intended, just as distributing a book gives a recipient the right to read it. A license can only restrict that right, or grant additional rights one would not have under copyright.

The GPLv3 preemptively deals with potential counterarguments to this point of view by explicitly affirming the right to use the software, but using _reductio ad absurdum_ , it seems ridiculous to be able to distribute a work under the protection of copyright law without implicitly giving the lawful recipients of the work the ability to use it as intended.

<comment><USER11> There are plenty of examples of commercial software that is distributed by the copyright owner free-of-charge, but requests agreement to a conditional license during the installation process.

I believe that in the US, this relies on a court ruling (sorry, no cite) that as the use of software inherently requires making a copy of it, such use is a copy right. This is unlike the case of a book or a painting.

<comment><USER12> There are also examples of commercial software distributed free of charge with no license agreement whatsoever. I sincerely hope that the decision that using software is a "copy" right not implicitly granted by its distribution is overturned, as the notion is truly ludicrous.

That doesn't necessarily mean that EULAs would be unenforcable; one could still argue that the license page of the installer is an effective access control mechanism between the user and the software, possibly invoking some twisted interpretation of the DMCA.

...and I hate that I feel like I have to put this, but as I mentioned elsewhere, IANAL.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to handle bookmarks so you can find them again? - <AUTHOR> This may be too pedestrian a topic for HN but I have so many bookmarks that when I had another one it disappears into the pile never to be seen again. I do use folders but now there are tons of folders, too, I've tried Trello, and I tried pocket briefly but it didn't seem quite right though maybe I didn't give it a chance.
My latest experiment is Google Bookmarks and I'm toying with just a simple either HTML page I add and categorize bookmarks on or a simple app to make managing them easier. Any suggestions on something to try?
To be perfectly honest it's possible the problem is me and not taking an organized approach, not tools that are the problem. Maybe I'm waiting for the bookmarking solution to solve a problem with clutter. <comment><USER2> I think that organizing bookmarks is actually a pretty important problem that most people have, at least in Safari and Chrome. IIRC, Firefox on the other hand has had tagged bookmarks for sometime.

I use Pinboard with searchable descriptions and tags to create a better organizational system. There are third party clients for mobile as well.

For some bookmarks like places to visit, I've adopted a hierarchical tag system within that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unreal. Pinboard is cool. I put down the $11 and jumped in. I think they're smart to price weirdly yet low. I did a double take at $11 and sort of laughed. Anyway, initial impression is wow pinboard is pretty cool and definitely not trying to be fancy. I like that.

<comment><USER3> Good choice! Pinboard has been around for over 7 years, creator is on HN (idlewords), and he has posted metrics like active users, data usage, costs, and even revenue for the 7th year anniversary. Product is here to stay :).

<comment><AUTHOR> A slightly funny thing is I emailed a friend to mention this newly organized approach but got Pinterest mixed up with pinboard and sent a link to that. I don't even know if people still use Pinterest. I remember I had an account for a little while and people pinned stuff to a wall but I didn't spend all that much time on it as that's not my thing.

<comment><USER3> Hah yeah that happens. When I've geeked out and wanted to search for people talking about Pinboard before, going past initial search results ends up being partially Pinterest stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug.

I have written a CLI-based bookmark manager. It's pretty simple to use, you can add links, remove them, add titles for them, descriptions etc... Everything is organized with tags so you can specify which tag you want to get links from and it will show them to you. Oh and everything's saved in a plain text file so you can backup that file, use version control and whatever you want to do with it.

I will also add searching in the future but have not come around to do it since I haven't had much time. If you or anyone wants to help it's on Github and it's written in Go. Pull requests are welcome :)

[https://github.com/Endi1/drawer](https://github.com/Endi1/drawer)

<comment><USER2> This looks pretty cool. Have you considered adding support for Pinboard sync?

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

As for the Pinboard sync: not really. Since I made this mainly for myself and for personal use and since I don't use Pinboard I never thought of adding it. But it does seem interesting, maybe in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Okay, now I get why I still felt there was something missing. There's actually two problems and I lumped them together. There's the bookmark problem. I want to come back to HN. And there's the "save for later" problem this looks like a cool article but there's no time now.

* So I think Pinboard does a great job at the bookmark problem but either I'm just not used to it yet or it's not quite got the "read for later" problem solved.

* It seems as though pocket might be stronger at addressing the "read for later" problem. But now that I know the missing piece is called "read for later" it's just a matter of inserting that component into my personal app ecosystem and being more alert for those solutions as pinboard seems to nail the bookmark problem.

HN and citizens thereof: you rule! Like my bookmarks, I forget all about HN but always feel it's a good experience to visit here, maybe discuss a few things, occasionally post a question or something.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pinboard. Totally worth it.

I use Pocket for short-term "I want to come back to this soon" bookmarking, but I use Pinboard for long-term saving of stuff I might want to refer to later, thanks to tagging and its page archival feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's $11/year and they pinboard claims to respect privacy. They also say it's simple. I'm liking this but it almost sounds too good to be true but for $11 I can roll the dice. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Currently, I am using Larder ([https://larder.io/](https://larder.io/)), which is a bookmarking tool for developers. It supports categorizing and tagging bookmarks. Categorizing is done by folders. You can make a folder that has child. It will make you easier to organize bookmarks. Beside that, you can search your bookmarked links by tag, title, and URL.

This tool also supports synchronizing your GitHub stars. So, you can track updates from projects that you starred on GitHub. If you want to bookmark something automatically, Larder extension is available for browsers, Android, and API.

I have been using Evernote. I just clip a website or PDF that I want to read later. But, I don't know why I can't use it properly. Like what you said, the problem is me. I haven't used Pinboard before. It seems many people recommend it a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Evernote is cool but for some reason I have this block against using it. I'll occasionally remember I have it then quickly forget. It's weird.

This larder thing looks interesting but to avoid drowning in tools might have to bookmark it for later and hopefully will stumble on it again. Trello can also work for bookmarks if you're doing research on a defined topic I've found but for general bookmarking i tried it does not scale well so it's perfect for projects and perfect for saving some results of some searches focused on that project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My next side project will hopefully address this problem. The issue I run into is that I have multiple data sources for articles I want to read, but no single feed that I can push those data sources into to later consume and mark as processed/read.

My current strategy has just been to accumulate hundreds-thousands of tabs in my browsers and basically rely on firefox's "save tabs from last session" feature to keep history. Downsides are that these aren't synchronized across all my browser instances. But this allows me to quickly scroll through the tab set, pick a tab, consume it, and just close it to mark as complete.

I used to dump snapshots of my working tab set into a plaintext file so that I could track history, back it up, and retrieve them later by other means, e.g. ssh into my server from phone to retrieve a link (very high overhead). This doesn't scale too well when you want to mark an item as completed as removing a line of text in a file manually in a shell session from your phone isn't exactly "fluid".

My plan is to build a service that will be a storage backend to store feeds/queues of "things I need to do", whether it's articles I've been meaning to read or just simple TODO notes like "do xyz tonight". There will be a system to label/tag items under a specific category so that in the UI you're not just bombarded with a list of thousands of TODOs.

Features I've been considering having:

* allow user to specify multiple cloud storage backends for the data to be replicated across * have relatively simple storage format, motivation being that I should be able to view/modify data through plaintext interface like editing a file with vim if I want to * create firefox plugin that will use this same system to synchronize tabs, this would mean that as a side effect I would have this information available on all my systems and backed up as well * web UI to access all generic queues, e.g. items I've manually created as well as the queues storing my tabs

Sometimes I wonder if there's a term associated with how obsessive I am about not losing information...

<comment><USER2> I do pretty much the same thing as you for "working tabs" but I bookmark each tab set as something like "[WIP] coffee shops to visit in manhattan" so Chrome doesn't get bogged down with 100+ tabs and multiple "sessions".

I also wrote some AppleScript code to move open tab sessions back and forth between Safari and Chrome [1]. You also might be interested in some of the alternatives listed in the readme, like OneTab.

[1]: [https://github.com/tedmiston/tab- transporter](https://github.com/tedmiston/tab-transporter)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to come back to this thread to say I imported my bookmarks into [https://pinboard.in/](https://pinboard.in/) and my bookmarks feel useable again, though I deleted a bunch once I could see how much crap I had in there.

I also fired up Feedly account as that's helpful too and I'd sort of forgotten about my account.

I'm thinking of testing out some more things as it seems like maybe there should be one more piece of the puzzle. Maybe that'll be pocket though I don't even remember what the interface is like or why I don't use it. Maybe no good reason at all.

</comment><comment><USER8> Circa 2000. A commercial product named PowerMarks. Cross-browser. One click bookmarking. Default indexing based on words pulled from title, some meta tags, whatever -- that the user could augment/change on the fly. Terms listed space-separated, making doing so very easy and quick.

Rapid, incremental pattern-matching search against the index. A list of matches would shrink as you continued to type in your search term. Again, space-separated, making this very quick to type.

Basically, if you remembered a few relevant things/terms about the page, you were probably going to find it within a couple of seconds. With the automated, default pretty-good indexing, you didn't have to spend time manually entering tags/terms. You didn't have to think and then manually sort bookmarks into folders.

PowerMarks "just worked".

Unfortunately, it was shareware, and it eventually went the way of a lot of such products. Add to this the continued changes of browsers that made keeping the cross-browser functionality and the application's independence (of itself, a major plus, in my book) an increasing struggle.

Sigh. I still miss it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wrote delicious for this originally. Now I use Pinboard for "ambient" bookmarks and Trello for project-oriented bookmarks.

<comment><USER10> hey - can you explain a bit on how you use trello for project-oriented bookmarks? or is it just links in a tile?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just use Evernote. Search is not great, but with the combination of notebooks and tags, you can keep things organized fairly well.

And, with the browser plugin, any google search also returns results from Evernote, which is good because if I thought it worthwhile to clip the page in the past, it was probably a good one.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use quiver for both notes and bookmarks ([https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver)), with the data residing on Google drive. My reasons (YMMV):

1\. The data format is clean and open. At some point if the app becomes unavailable for whatever reason, I can write my own to retrieve my data. Or someone will.

2\. There's an unofficial app for Android called "quaver". It's not very polished, but when linked with a folder synced to Google drive, it allows me to access/edit my notes on mobile.

3\. Search is pretty good. You can tag stuff, arrange by folders, and search.

4\. It can store attachments.

5\. Sometimes if I think I need an offline version of a page, I just do a copy-paste and save it in quiver. Or sometimes I just save the page as PDF and add it to quiver.

<comment><USER13> >3\. Search is pretty good. You can tag stuff, arrange by folders, and search.

Astonishingly, there's no search and replace. Like.. at all.

Incredibly frustrating because it's such an incredible app otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to say thanks to those who replied. I frankly didn't think anyone would upvote this, thinking it was too trivial. Thank you for the upvotes and thank you for the suggestions. Maybe one of these solutions will do the trick or maybe more than one is the best way.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, I've actually been working on a bookmarks manager for myself (screenshot)[1].

I have this exact same problem.. so many links and no good way to organize them. My previous solution was a simple markdown file that I would add my links to and then generate an html page served through my website. But this got really cumbersome. I wanted something easier to manage/edit, so I made this.

Is anyone interested in trying this out? If so, check out my profile contact info and I'd be happy to discuss it :) I'm very close to having the mvp complete, and it would be nice to get some feedback before opening it up to the public more.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/LKSQuT4.png](http://i.imgur.com/LKSQuT4.png)

<comment><USER15> You might enjoy this project I put together:

[https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public/](https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public/)

Demo:

[http://skx.github.io/bookmarks.public/](http://skx.github.io/bookmarks.public/)

New bookmarks are just appended to a data-file, and jQuery/javascript magic makes it easy to discover things. I store my own bookmarks in a git-repository so I can clone to ~/Repos/personal/bookmarks/ on each of my systems.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I saw this a few months ago on HN! Actually, it's got a lot of great features, but lacking the layout I'm personally looking for. The 3 col layout (in my screenshot), along with visible favicons, allows me to quickly glance and find what I'm looking for without having to scroll to far. I also plan on adding a quick filter search too.

Great job on your app though, it's very functional and much better than other bookmarking solutions I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What do you want to do with your bookmarks?

I think using Pocket (mentioned in comments, not by you) solves a different problem than browser bookmarks, for example. Describing your desires may help the community describe (or build!) options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay enough people have mentioned pocket and I tested and dropped it that I think I'll make pocket my final test of the evening. I'd say I feel a sense of accomplishment that I organized insanely cluttered bookmarks on a Saturday night, despite how pathetic that might sound when I say it out loud. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Create a FlipBoard account, create as many private magazines (categories) as you want, install the bookmarklet and flip/bookmark away.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have Flipboard but I have not tried using it in this way. I'll give that a spin, too. I didn't even realize it had a private magazine feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about [https://meemo.minimal-space.de/](https://meemo.minimal-space.de/) ?

</comment><comment><USER19> I have found myself using TiddlyWiki for this. I have pages on topics in which I put links and notes. It supports tags also.

<comment><USER20> I use a wiki too, I have a bookmark that makes an entry on the page I enter along with a comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A nextcloud solution would be awesome to me. Would need a browser plugin to simplify the page and upload it to nextcloud, then nextcloud could work out what tags would be appropriate for it, and you could add some more if needed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I put links on notes in Google Keep grouped in some fashion. Some overlap, but that's okay. I think I saw someone post on HN that they used Keep for that which prompted me to do it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use Google Bookmarks with tags, but even then I can lose stuff. I had thought to record them as prolog facts with url and a list of tags and date. then build out some synonyms for the tags.

</comment><comment><USER24> A manually edited file with a JSON-like syntax for different tags and items listed under each. Regularly left open with several other text files used for personal organization.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://moovlink.com](http://moovlink.com) \- you can organise links into cathegories, rearrange them, tag them, search for links ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Socialize your bookmarks? Is that a thing? I'm trying to imagine my friends adding bookmarks for me. It'd be interesting if nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What sort of bookmark numbers are you looking at?

I currently have about 2000 articles on Pocket, and just tagging + simple search works for me.

</comment><comment><USER27> I use pocket and surprised to see no one mentioned it. Is it nt that good? Now curious to know.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have an HTML file along with my dot-files that I keep synchronized in git.

</comment><comment><USER29> I use pocket. It even adds a "save to pocket" button to hacker news!

</comment><comment><USER30> It's crazy to think that hackers/developers/etc are using all these cloud- based things with slow interfaces and controlled schemes by third parties. I'm not even a true geek and I find this behavior a bit bewildering. Where are the heroes?

Export your bookmarks to HTML, modify your HTML page to be as many sub-pages as you want, add descriptions under each, and you're done. Put your main page with your chief faves as your only "saved" bookmark on your browser.

No clouds. No one can erase your data. No one can charge you for your own bookmarks (the absolute height of insanity).

Modify as you see fit in your fave code editor.

Oh my... you must use Cmd-D because you are in a rush? Trust me. If you're that in a rush, you aren't even cataloging or archiving the source correctly. And honestly, probably 90% of bookmarks aren't worth saving anyway. You do know about search engines, right?

I also like to add notes as to Why I Saved This: because if I can't really drum up a good reason, it isn't worth it. Things that do NOT count for that field are "for later", "because", "it's cool", "maybe so-and-so might need it" (what are we doing? saving for other people too?).

You can use tags if you want in your descriptions by putting a hashtag in front of the word, but why bother? You can Ctrl/Cmd-F your whole bookmark page and fly through your options far faster than other methods. All text is searchable, right? Must we insist on the insanity of prefixing certain words with #?

Look ma! You can even change your fonts and get all hackathonish with CSS, if you get bored.

Need to send a collection of bookmarks to someone else? (Warning above about this, but still....)... Just cut and paste part of your webpage into your email, etc. Look at that. Your descriptions are already there, guaranteeing that they will be more likely to look at your links, or causing you to be noted as an intrusive link-pusher, but either way, goal accomplished!

Now, some HN readers will insist on mobile-sync. That's where they are wrong and you'll be right to ignore them. Anything worth reading or noting is on the real web, not the mobile web, and standing around with your phone collecting and sending links is about as inhumane of a task as you can do. It was bad on your laptop; it's downright madness on your phone. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

If you must save _some_ links for mobile use only (I don't know... the website of your local library so you can look up its hours? Oh wait... Google/Apple maps instead), then just save them ONLY there for quick access. You don't need to sync. Repeat after me. Sync is a lie from the devil to give clouds the power. Stop doing it so much. Also, stop printing stuff (another lecture for another time).</comment>


Comcast in Talks to Buy DreamWorks Animation for More Than $3B - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/comcast-in-talks-to-buy-dreamworks-for-more-than-3-billion-1461720380 <comment><AUTHOR> updated article: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/comcasts-nbc-universal-to-buy- dr...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/comcasts-nbc-universal-to-buy-dreamworks- for-3-8-billion-1461849691)</comment>


Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15% - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/05/07/the-way-forward/ <comment><USER2> I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak.

Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I have to let go of some people from X department."

Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially, since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.

<comment><USER3> When Spolesky brought on this guy, I was shocked. He had no profile or activity on Stackoverflow. He wasn't even a developer and his resume indicated he was just generic management talking head. Given how much Spolesky emphasis "product person" to be in charge as opposed to white label MBAs, none of that made any sense. I'd to only imagine he was cashing out and part of the deal from investors was to place this guy who they trusted to grow "enterprise" business. Just why every beautiful startup must make their owners billionaires while getting ruined?

<comment><USER4> > _Just why every beautiful startup must make their owners billionaires while > getting ruined?_

That's literally there in the definition of a VC-backed business model. You get a lot of money now, in exchange for some amount of ownership and _expectation that the business will grow_ , whether it makes sense for it or not. The investors want a return on their investment, so they absolutely will push the business past the point of breaking; if they can extract their return before it burns down, then they win.

Or, in short, from investor PoV, _startups are cattle, not pets_.

<comment><USER5> I feel like putting a talking head in charge of SE risks limiting growth. SE is a business that benefits greatly from leadership that understands their core demographics.

I'm sure they still still grow, because SE is an incredibly useful product. But I think a bad leader poses a serious risk of constraining natural growth by pushing monetization too hard and driving away organic growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do not have data to back this claim. But the tone of this blog post makes me feel that, the new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle of the covid virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago.

With the crap ton of marketing buzz in the post, and the casual mention of the layoffs, I don't think the CEO or the new board seem to care all that much about the laidoff employees.

Again, this is my personal feeling and may not be the truth.

<comment><USER7> > new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle of the covid > virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago.

Why would that indicate the CEO is _incompetent_?

Doesn't it stand to reason that _management_ would and should take advantage of the whatever is happening in the wider scheme of things to advance their narrative, and that doing so is indicative of _competence_ within _their_ frame of reference?

<comment><USER8> Take a look around this comment section. This move isn't being received well by _anyone_ and _nobody_ is buying his bullshit. That, and mass layoffs are typically an excellent indicator of incompetence.

<comment><USER7> I think you're missing my point.

The CEO likely doesn't give a hoot about HN's opinion.

They probably care about their bonus and how it all advances themselves on their career path.

<comment><USER8> > They probably care about their bonus and how it all advances themselves on > their career path.

That doesn't sound _anything_ like the priorities of a competent CEO. I think you're missing my point, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was kinda confused why covid-19 is effecting StackOverflow. After reading it, a good portion of layoffs is the Talent team with the reason of planned long term hiring freeze so they won't need (edit) this product offering for the near future.

Side note, the original title of the posts is "A message from our CEO: The Way Forward"

<comment><USER10> This is referring to StackOverflow's Talent product, which is a software engineering focused hiring platform. Seems like they furloughed the sales and marketing team for this product, due to an expected slowdown in market-wide hiring.

<comment><USER9> Ohh I misunderstood, I thought that's what they call their recruiting team

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't really know much about this guy or his business, but I can't help but comment that the tone and phrasing he uses comes off as "I'm an asshole."

I know that's less than civil, but that was just what I gleaned. It struck me as someone who doesn't care but wants to sound like they do.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, but can you explain why? Impugning someone's character like this seems unfair if you can't point to anything more concrete than a vague feeling. What makes you think this guy is an uncaring asshole?

Also, to be clear, this is a quarterly update on the entire business, not a lay-off announcement. I highly doubt that anything related to the layoffs was news to anyone in the company. That was likely covered in internal communications over the past few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have they hired a alien attack movie scriptwriter? - Since then, we have entered a new era, and societies in every corner of the globe face a historic challenge. We are reminded that for all of our advances as a civilization, nature can be a powerful force which we must adapt and innovate around.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hate to see this business speak from a company I admire. Bad market to be in as a software engineer, with so many talented folks available.

</comment><comment><USER15> Could not finish reading through it. Could have kept it straight to the point rather than convoluting with unnecessary details.

<comment><USER16> Would it be uncharitable to suggest that perhaps that was the goal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> SO has really become a toxic place which is run by politically correct people. Just look at this corporate speak blog. I don't understand how the corona virus would impact them so hard they have to cut jobs, seems like a bullshit reason to just cut people off imo. Every company should be prepared for bad times.

I have no sympathy for the management. They have obviously done a poor job.

<comment><USER18> At first, I did not understand either how Corona would affect them. But they explain it in the article: a big part of their revenue comes from job listings. Since very few companies are hiring right now, that revenue is down significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How is StackOverflow negatively affected by the Pandemic?

Is it that their customers go under, or see the services as nonessential so they get less revenue?

It seems like it should be one of those Netflix-type companies that do better when everyone is remote, than they do otherwise.

<comment><USER20> Their main revenue is from two things. Firstly from their job boards which will be significantly reduced as few companies are hiring. Then secondly from advertising which will also be reduced during times of recession.

The product you think of as stack overflow that will probably is really just a way for them to drive the right kind of traffic to those revenue sources.

<comment><USER21> Very plausible reasons indeed, but is it probably the same for many other companies? Just wondering if a chain reaction has already started.

<comment><USER22> That chain reaction is called "recession" and yes, it has already started. Expect more and more similar announcements from here to Christmas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > These actions primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our > Talent business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there a good third-party article we can change this to? Bad-news press releases are notoriously difficult to read.

</comment><comment><USER25> "We're all in this together..." Except you, because you're laid off.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is it time for SO 2? Lets be real, many articles are out of date with answers being for older versions, the culture is getting worse and the company is looking to cash in on the thing. Could we use a blank slate?

<comment><USER27> Conceptually, Stack Overflow did something amazing for its time. I agree however that after all these years there are now visible shortcomings in the approach, and simply starting the same thing from scratch wouldn't solve the problems.

The primary format of SO is Q&A. Some Q&A is timeless, as in the answer is still relevant today as it was 10 years ago. Some Q&A invalidates quickly and would probably need to be touched up every year or so. How to account for both?

Another issue SO strongly struggles with is the same entry-level questions being asked again and again, in different wordings. I wouldn't really put the onus on the newcomers here, as they're often new to programming to begin with and thus couldn't know what's a problem other people might have already had, how to search for things etc. But the tooling to help them avoid those situations is crucial. Currently, possibly related questions are shown when writing a new question, but the problem still persists. How to better avoid this problem? Is this simply a matter of nailing down on the related questions algorithm or is there a better approach?

And lastly, the company. There are many very real cases where the change in management has hurt the SO both as a site and a community. I think the answer lies somewhere between SO, MDN and Wikipedia - with all the ups and downs it offers. Clearly, making a global knowledge base and then tacking on investor interest later doesn't work out all that well. To date, I don't think this problem is really solved, as Wikipedia also has a number of issues it struggles with. Without addressing this core issue, the rest are more or less irrelevant with time.

<comment><USER28> _Some Q &A invalidates quickly and would probably need to be touched up every year or so. How to account for both?_

I've seen answers regarding my two major areas of interest - AWS and .Net Core being updated by the original authors as new features came out and new versions of the framework are released.

<comment><USER27> While this is one approach, I think it's only a partial solution. Stack Overflow has a huge user base and many users who were once active are now either occasional visitors or have moved on completely. I think something akin to a stale vote would work, because trying to organically out-vote an answer that has gathered hundreds of votes over the years but is now out of date doesn't really work. Another alternative is Stack Overflow's "community owned" answers, but those bring another layer of politics into play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't get it, how are they affected by COVID

<comment><USER30> According to the post, it's due to contraction with their talent sourcing product:

> This week, we reduced our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the > affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in > regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option. These actions > primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our Talent > business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

<comment><USER31> What I find notable is that close to 15% (at least 7.5% if "most" means what everyone thinks it means) of the workforce is sales and marketing for a service that is not even core to their business.

<comment><USER32> Pretty sure that Talent is over 50% of their revenue. The primary way they monetize Stack Q&A websites is through job placements.

There are other websites that are surprisingly monetizing through this, like AngelList.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Assuming there was enough runway for a rainy day, this could be a great time to invest in some R&D projects that will pay off dividends when the sun starts to shine again.

<comment><USER34> If those projects are worth investing in, why weren't they invested in before COVID?

It's not that the engineers have nothing to do - it's that there is little revenue, and no amount of features they ship is going to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can one of the many commenters decrying this as "bullshit business-speak" explain to me what is so terrible about this? I'm genuinely asking.

My theory is that this is a good example of why HN discourages editorializing in titles. The current title here ("Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%") sets you up to think that this is a layoff announcement by SO. But from reading the first paragraph, I think this is just an externally- facing quarterly update on the business overall. I suspect that nothing about the layoffs here was news to anyone in the company, and they had plenty of internal communications around it already. And even here, the language about layoffs seems fine to me:

 _This has been a tough week at Stack Overflow, and taking care of each other is more important than ever right now. Like companies large and small, we have had to make difficult choices in order to reflect the market conditions. This week, we reduced our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option. These actions primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our Talent business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

We made these decisions with great care and only after assessing and leveraging all other options. We've paused all non-critical hiring, suspended our travel budget for all of Q2 and Q3, and cut marketing and software costs significantly.

Reducing our headcount was a painful but necessary decision, of no fault of the employees affected, and one that I take full accountability for as the CEO. We did this in order to ensure that we can serve our customers and community in the long-run._

What is the problem with that, specifically?

The rest of the post reads like a perfectly normal update, written in a slightly formal tone, which seems appropriate to me. If you're running a business with hundreds of employees, tens of thousands of customers, tens of millions of readers, and other stakeholders like partners, vendors, and investors, you probably are going to be a little more formal with your tone. It takes uncommon skill to write the kind of updates that Buffet or Bezos manage to pull off. Just because this is anodyne doesn't make it "bullshit" or this guy "incompetent" or "an asshole".

Can someone point out anything specific that they found so off-putting about this quarterly update on the business?

<comment><USER35> Personally I don't think it was that bad -- however it's so much text and words so I couldn't read all of it. It could have been 1/4 it's length?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I could probably understand why they did this,as hiring will be non existent for the upcoming months,but pages upon pages of BS about core values,culture, viruses,and whatever else comes along just left bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER37> For a second, I thought this title claimed that stack overflow reduces the need for software engineers by 15%. Now I'm curious what the actual number might be, given the productivity boost that it provides...

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't get it. It is as if Zoom would announcing job cuts "because COVID-19".

Stackoverflow is an internet service providing answers to questions, why would they get lower counts of traffic?

<comment><USER39> If Zoom had a division that went around doing Zoom room installs in offices, I can easily imagine them having cuts or furloughs in that group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> An aside: Anyone else finding themselves adding site:github.com rather than site:stackoverflow.com to their Google searches more now?

<comment><USER41> Yes. As a frontend developer, my default mode now is to almost always go straight to searching issues in the GitHub repo of an npm package I'm using.

I only end up on SO when googling very generic questions about React, TypeScript or JavaScript (and sometimes CSS). Also, the top Google results from SO are often from ~2017 or earlier which puts me off

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> [https://www.businessinsider.com/stack-overflow-reduces- workf...](https://www.businessinsider.com/stack-overflow-reduces-workforce- furloughs-layoffs-2020-5)

[http://archive.md/8mjey](http://archive.md/8mjey)

</comment><comment><USER43> In this time of uncertainty, wouldn't be more humane to just reduce the salary 15% to everyone?

<comment><USER18> From a business perspective it would be a bad idea. If you have three revenue streams (Advertising, Enterprise communication product, hiring product/marketplace), of which two are doing very well and one is not doing well (hiring) you need to continue investing in what is working and stop burning money on what is not working. Otherwise you will lose your competitive edge in the areas that are working well.

In the end, the responsibility of the CEO is not to give every employee the best life possible but to ensure the long-term success and survival of the company. If this is ensured, it also means job security for everyone not laid off!

<comment><USER44> This is a one off shock, they don't need to do this

<comment><USER45> One of, if not _the_ , _largest_ shocks in history. Already bigger than 2008. This time in history isn't a minor outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> >> Fireside Chat

How did this term make it to the buzzword bingo? What does it even mean?

<comment><USER47> it's a quite famous US historical reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So many words for a very simple thing - _we just cutting down headcount_

</comment><comment><USER49> What is stack overflow's work force? The devs of website? Admins?

</comment><comment><USER47> don't understand the complaints. this is a quarterly news update. hence the tone. there's nothing wrong with it.

the defect is that the layoffs are just a paragraph in passing. on its face it appears highly insensitive, but come on. i'll give benefit of the doubt that it was dealt with internally much better. it only gets an inch of print in this report because it's a very small factor in the general news of the company.

actually the main defect here is that the HN title is highly editorialized.

</comment><comment><USER50> Pretty tone deaf.

> We are facing this situation together.

Well, approximately 85% of you are.

</comment><comment><USER51> Fwiw just how many of the people posting negative comments on here are paying SO users? It's still a business that needs to make money. Just saying...

</comment><comment><USER52> > This is a key moment in our company's history, as the whole world is dealing > with significant uncertainty. Know that you are not alone. We are facing > this situation together. Our goal is to stay focused on living our core > values and actively connect with teammates, our community, and our > customers.

The phrase "We are facing this together" must sound really hollow if you're one of the people who has been laid off...

<comment><USER53> It's becoming a meme, like a viral tweet said

> I like how ads have gone from "buy a toyota" to "this is a difficult and > uncertain time for us all...buy a toyota"

Like when ever company says how we are in this together or how emphatetic they are in these difficult times it just fills me with dread, the opposite of what they were aiming for, it's clear that talking about the crisis is now just another trick in the PR department of almost every single company so there is no way to make those words not feel empty, so I rather don't hear them say anything about it at all.

<comment><USER54> "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_\(1976_film\))

This comment isn't a rebuttal — I agree with you and every time I mull on these things I am reminded of the memorable saying from the movie _Network_.

<comment><USER55> I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore. I'm buying a Toyota!

On edit: wait, I don't even have a driver's license!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> He could have stopped with everything before...

"Despite the impact to our Talent business..."

Why mix in a lay-off announcement with a marketing spiel?

</comment><comment><USER56> I definitely read this as Stack Overflow was responsible for there needing to be 15% less developers/techies.

</comment><comment><USER57> when the guy firing you says

"We are facing this situation together."

how distant from reality can someone be?

</comment><comment><USER58> Yeah, they brought this guy in to be the hatchet man. Executes just as expected.

</comment><comment><USER59> That's a whole lot of bullshit for a proactive backlash protection.

</comment><comment><USER60> Does this mean more or less rude comments on this toxic website?

</comment><comment><USER61> Who's going to do all the flagging as duplicate now?

</comment><comment><USER62> SO is gonna be gobbled up by Github Issues altogether.

<comment><USER63> The only certainty with Stack Exchange, is that it's going to end up in the belly of one of just a few possible tech companies: Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Salesforce, etc.

They'll slash most of the communities away (even if they initially lie about their intentions and pretend they won't do that) and keep the focus on the tech part of the network.

Knowledge services are not great businesses, they're almost entirely incompatible with the venture capital model. Those that take VC all eventually get force-liquidated, without exception. Stack Exchange is still pretending to be a knowledge service. As they took on more venture capital they pivoted to being primarily HotJobs 3.0. The only way they were going to avoid that outcome, is to 1) never take major venture capital 2) stay super thin operationally; they did neither, so they get liquidated, it's only a question of time now.

The Internet will need to replace Stack Exchange with a new platform in the near future, as it'll combo rot and most of the communities will be killed off after SE is sold. I'd advise someone/s out there to get started on replacing SE right now, as by the time you get a new platform up to speed (assume a few years), SE as it has been thought of over the prior decade will be on its last legs and the new platform will be in prime position to step in. And please, do it right, do not take venture capital, which is a devil's bargain for knowledge services: they will kill you in the end, guaranteed, every single time. I've been closely watching this stupid story repeat in the knowledge space for over two decades now. Go the non-profit route ideally, or alternatively go with the wikiHow approach and stay thin (it's the sole viable option to survive long-term as an independent knowledge service business).

<comment><USER64> Codidact ([https://codidact.org](https://codidact.org)) has been born out of all the recent (and not so recent) drama over at SE. It is looking to do exactly the things you describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> > _Closed. This message is off-topic._

</comment><comment><USER66> Am I the only one who interpreted this headline as: The global workforce of programmers would be 15% bigger if it weren't for Stack Overflow. ?

</comment><comment><USER67> I have some karma to burn, so here it goes:

Be shitty to people and they will turn their back to you.

I am ashamed to admit it, but I am happy to see companies that embrace being shitty to users, fall like a house of cards.

Yes, SO embraced being shitty to users and creating a toxic environment for far too long, despite their latest weak attempts to fix it.

I hope eBay, Paypal and Yelp are next.

Also somewhat Reddit. They are ok for consuming data, but if you try to post anything it's pretty user hostile.

<comment><USER68> You think mean comments are a SO or reddit problem? The fact that anonymous online discourse gets rude and heated has been known since the days of usenet.

There was even some of this on BBS forums, but that was a more civilized time, likely because we knew the people we were talking to were within our local calling area in most cases.

None of this is new. It's a humanity problem, not a technology problem.

<comment><USER69> > None of this is new. It's a humanity problem, not a technology problem.

When you put it that way though, maybe technology can address it by somehow humanizing the communication more. I bet people are researching ways to do this.

<comment><USER64> FWIW, StackOverflow have (as mentioned in the blog post) deployed a machine learning system for detecting unfriendly comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Furloughed, mostly

<comment><USER71> please, don't drink their kool-aid.

it's fired, not furloughed.

it's to be able to not lose ability to generate profit, not "to be able to serve our customers"

it's to save 85% who we think are more worth, not "we are all in this together"

<comment><USER70> I'm confused. You think they're lying when they say the employees were furloughed? They might be lying but I don't see any reason to belive that. Having been furloughed during government shutdowns myself I understand the situation a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I will totally fulfill that HN clichee of people in disbelief that any tech company has employees... But: TIL they have 250 of them. It's a fully automated site, huh.

<comment><USER73> Every site with user-generated content has an army of employees of various sorts, trying to make sure it doesn't descend into a morass. The natural un- moderated state of any community site is complete and total garbage.

<comment><USER74> One man's trash...

<comment><USER73> Well "trash" is a matter of opinion, but profitability isn't. If a community is left unmoderated, it gets so toxic and extreme that advertisers won't go near it with a 10 foot pole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I find most answers on stack overflow to be useless and a lot are just garbage.

I feel the whole site needs a big banner "PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION"

</comment><comment><USER76> Chance of getting a meaningful reply on any technical question which answer does not simply involve providing the documentation for the given framework or language involved:

\- Stack Overflow: 1% \- Reddit: 8% \- The Daily WTF forum: 81%

This is internet is broken. I want the old one back.

<comment> dan-robertson I think it strongly depends on the tags of the question. In particular I think you will poor quality answers on popular, high volume tags like JavaScript.

<comment><USER76> [https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/27134/how-do-i-parse- this...](https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/27134/how-do-i-parse-this-crap- json)

This is the question I'm talking about. Apart from people posting funny memes there's some genuine helping going on. Same question on SO: no response. Same question on Reddit: one serious response.

People can downvote me all they want but I see that decentralized bulletin boards seem to work a lot better even in 2020.

If I have legitimate professional questions I need to find a forum for it, because that's where people hang out that are actually interested in the community instead of rep or likes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think any company that lays off people at this time are scum, they should be embarrassed and rescind this.

There are loans available in the us and uk to keep people employed.

I won't use stack overflow for the rest of may, it isn't much but fuck them.

They know the people they let go can't get another job at the moment.

<comment><USER77> How easy is it to get those loans? I know in the US the PPP seems easy to get the bigger you are, otherwise if you don't have a tight relationship with a bank you probably missed out.

<comment><USER44> If they missed out then the ceo should resign, it is basic business sense</comment></comment></comment>


Man behind Sweden's controversial virus strategy admits mistakes - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behind-sweden-s-virus-strategy-says-he-got-some-things-wrong <comment><USER2> While this is certainly a classic example of appeal to authority, I don't think the data backs it up. As of May 29, there have been 44k deaths in Sweden from all causes. If you extrapolate that out for the year, you get 105k. That's about 15% more than a typical year in that country [1]. Obviously bad, but all countries are experiencing increased mortality. It's not clear how much lockdown would have reduced that.

Additionally, there may be some death harvesting going on, where future deaths are pulled forward due to Covid. We are seeing this in the US [2], so possibly their incremental deaths will be lower than 15%.

Finally, if we are doing appeals to authority, the Prime Minister of neighboring Norway says she closed schools "out of fear" and seems to regret that action [3].

I'm a parent, and the last point is personal for me. There is enormous cost to lockdowns that close schools, especially for working parents, especially if both parents work, especially if your home is cramped or small, and so on.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number- of-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/2HsNN54.png](https://i.imgur.com/2HsNN54.png) from [https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/gvfep9/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/gvfep9/el_gato_malo_on_twitter_take_the_scandinavia_test/), see also [https://imgur.com/RQiEIku](https://imgur.com/RQiEIku) from the same thread

[3] [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8373857/Norways- PM-...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8373857/Norways-PM-admits- closed-schools-nurseries-fear.html)

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you brought that up because if you look at cases /1M pops on worldometers Sweden is actually below at least two european countries (Italy, Spain) who enforced a strict quarantine and travel ban.

Yet Sweden are seeing a pretty high mortality compared to those countries.

So my conclusion is that quarantine has done no difference to spread but the state of health care is affecting mortality.

And not only Norway is making mistakes in this new experience. The fact that Denmark closes down tourist areas, and the border, but allow their citizens to cross the bridge to Sweden and enjoy all the tourist areas there, and then come back to Denmark, that's just silly.

<comment><USER4> > The fact that Denmark closes down tourist areas, and the border, but allow > their citizens to cross the bridge to Sweden and enjoy all the tourist areas > there, and then come back to Denmark, that's just silly.

This is politically impossible to stop. Sweden has not closed its borders, so there's no one to stop danes from entering. And Denmark can't close it's borders to danish nationals, so they can't be stopped from returning home.

The Danish Government has made clear statements saying that they strongly urge people to not go to Sweden

<comment><USER5> They can't close their border to Danish nationals, but they can quarantine people for 14 days upon return. If they were completely serious about stopping this they would have done that. Nobody is going to go on a short tourism trip knowing they will be quarantined upon return home.

<comment><USER4> I don't find it particularly odd or hypocritical that the danish government would prefer to avoid a situation where they have to forcefully quarantine people

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The weirdest thing in all this is the comparison to neighboring nordic countries and the conclusion that if Sweden had acted like Norway, the outcome would be similar.The south part of Sweden had a similar outcome to neighboring Denmark.

What should have happened was that Sweden's major outbreak (Stockholm) should probably have been given a stricter and earlier containment. But that's easy to say in hindsight. The corresponding initial outbreaks in Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen most likely simply weren't as large as the one in Stockholm. Stockholm had school holidays that coincided with the worst outbreak in the Italian alps. Other parts of Sweden didn't, and didn't get the same size initial oubreak. A good comparison is Belgium where the _whole country_ had school holidays and traveled a lot the same week as Stockholm (The week of feb 24th). They had a similar development.

<comment><USER4> Sweden allowed for gatherings of up to 500 people 10+ days after Norway and Denmark had set the limit to less than 50 trying to explain it with "just bad luck" is ridiculously revisionist history

edit: sources

[https://www.thelocal.dk/20200317/denmark-shuts-down- restaura...](https://www.thelocal.dk/20200317/denmark-shuts-down-restaurants- and-cafs-and-bans-all-gatherings) 17\. of march, Denmark banning gatherings above 10 people

[https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-sweden-still-skiing- despit...](https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-sweden-still-skiing-despite- concerns/a-52908473) 25\. of march, sweden still having parties of 499 people

<comment><USER6> > trying to explain it with "just bad luck"

I didn't. No one is. It's a combination of 1) poor protection of elderly homes 2) a larger seed outbreak most likely in the Stockholm area 3) less mitigations. I think 1+2 makes the majority of the difference while 3 makes less of a difference, because people changed behavior similar to other countries (and obviously other countries just like Sweden changed behavior before regulations were put in place).

Obviosly the decision to keep business and schools open weren't taken assuming it would make _no_ difference to the outcome. There is an element of calculated risk here. No one is denying that. But very few as far as we know have been infected by school children so that risk seems like the correct one, for example.

The limits of 500 and later 50 people for gatherings was laws for _public gatherings_ i.e. these were laws on businesses. You couldn't arrange concerts larger than that, and so on.

The recommendations towards individuals was always to keep social distancing, not socialize in large groups, not travel unnecessarily and so on.

I think in some countries there were bans even for private gatherings, e.g. _laws_ restricting the size of private gatherings. That was never in place in Sweden (unsure if it would have required some constitutional change or similar, but it was said to be impossible).

So even when the restriction is 50 people, I can still arrange a private wedding for 1500 people. But obviously, no one is going to do that so it's hypothetical.

The question is what happened, not so much what was allowed. Most places with lockdowns saw the majority of the effect predate the lockdowns, because people change behavior. I doubt there were many cases of large gatherings any time after mid March. There will always be idiots obviously (such as the weekend afterskiers that week in march in Åre), but such things occurred elsewhere too with "corona parties" etc. The difference is that they could take place in a few places in the open in Sweden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article spins it as an absolute failure:

> _At 43 deaths per 100,000, Sweden's death rate is among the highest globally > and far exceeds that of neighboring Denmark and Norway, which imposed much > tougher lockdowns at the outset of the pandemic._

However:

1) that is much less than many other european countries (Belgium, Spain, UK, Italy, France) which all implemented a full lockdown. You would logically expect more death if you spare a lockdown to your population. Having less deaths than many countries who implemented a lockdown is not, I think, a disastrous outcome. It is rather a success.

2) the justification for the lockdown was to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system (flattening the curve to under the hospital capacity, which everyone seems to have forgotten now). As far as I know the Swedish healthcare system wasn't overwhelmed.

<comment><USER8> > As far as I know the Swedish healthcare system wasn't overwhelmed.

They werent because their official position was to not send old people to the hospital and to just let them die. 50% of all people who died lived in care homes, despite the intention being to protect exactly those people.

Here is the BBC reporting about it: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-52704836](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836)

<comment><USER9> in the US, that number is 42%. 20% of Swedes are over 65 and only 15% of Americans are. So it's reasonable to assume a third more Swedes (per capita) are in nursing homes. That only about 20% more of the deaths come from that population makes me think Sweden is doing better than the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sweden's GDP _grew_ by 0.1% in Q1 2020 (0.4% annualized). Germany's GDP fell. [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/29/coronavirus-swedens-gdp- actu...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/29/coronavirus-swedens-gdp-actually- grew-in-the-first-quarter.html). The UK's GDP fell as well. Sweden's economy has not actually contracted by 7%. That is merely a forecast for 2020 and GDP forecasts are not particularly reliable.

They probably will be down for the year, but right now there really isn't any evidence their economy has suffered the same fate as the rest of Europe.

<comment><USER11> A bit irrelevant in this particular case. Not sure if it's mentioned in the Bloomberg version of the interview, but the Swedish interview focuses on the regret over the high death count, not the economic falloff (as Tegnell is a epidemiologist, not economist).

<comment><USER6> His position in the public health authority means his goal is maximizing the long term public health, e.g. minimizing all cause death (and of course other bad outcomes).

That means he has to consider deaths 10 years from now due to lower healthcare spending from a recession created by the pandemic. He has to consider mental health effects of mitigations, and so on. So while he isn't an economist, he can never ignore the economy.

This holistic view I think has been missing from the discussion in other countries to some degree.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely, this is the definition of 'wisdom'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article missed the details of what he said in the interview, located here: [https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&arti...](https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=7487188)

In the last paragraph in a very academic tone, what Sweden did was to add more and more restrictions as they were shown to be needed, while most other country shut down everything to open up later. In order to figure out which restrictions works and which didn't, the approach to shutdown everything and sort things out later may be a better strategy in the future.

The bloomberg article also goes a bit beyond the interview in its commentary. It mention specific restrictions like "visit restaurants, go shopping, attend gyms and send children under 16 to school". The interview does not, and there are good reasons. Doing comparison between nations like Sweden and Denmark gives one type of numbers, but doing regional comparisons gives an other. If we compare Copenhagen and the city on the Swedish side of the bridge called Malmö, we find that Malmö has less cases and deaths while not having any of those specific restrictions. Why? We don't know for sure, but the main suspect are the number of elderly people living in care homes. When it come to Sweden more than half of all death comes from elderly care in the area around Stockholm, and Malmö does not have as many as Copenhagen and much fewer than Stockholm.

From there we can speculate all day long on what kind of restrictions do help. Maybe keeping children under 16 at home forces the typical demographic that are employed at elderly care to also stay home. Maybe Sweden, or Stockholm, use a different strategy in handling elderly care than other countries/regions and that is the culprit. Maybe other countries did more to prevent the virus from getting a hold in the elderly care system by providing employees more equipment and more time. When more nations are lifting restrictions, maybe the answer will be known.

<comment><USER4> > If we compare Copenhagen and the city on the Swedish side of the bridge > called Malmö, we find that Malmö has less cases and deaths while not having > any of those specific restrictions. Why? We don't know for sure

We might not "know for sure", but population density is clearly the biggest factor in any of this. Comparing Malmö to similar sized Danish cities again show clear effects from the differences in measures taken

<comment><USER13> Could you give specific examples?

If we look at the heat maps on wikipedia, it is clear that regions difference exist in Sweden. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#/media/File:COVID-19_Outbreak_Cases_in_Sweden_per_capita_with_Legend.svg)

Population density is also not a major difference between Malmö and Copenhagen. 4,049/km2 vs 4,400/km2. Stockholm however does have 5,200/km2.

In absolute numbers, Copenhagen is almost twice the total size than Malmö, but the only other city we can then compare to is Aarhus that is 2/3 of the size of malmö and a drastic lower density of 2,874/km2. At best we can make an argument that you can not compare Malmö to any city in Denmark since no city in Denmark is close to the same size and population density.

<comment><USER4> Just using population density doesn't give the full picture. Copenhagen metro area has a population of 2 million, while Malmös metro area is around 700k

In practice this means that Copenhagens busiest train station (Nørreport) serves (in non-pandemic times) 165k passengers a day while Malmo Central Station serves 46k passengers daily. Which gives a much better picture of the kind of density that would make a virus spread easier

<comment><USER13> Blaming the mass transport system is an other theory being used to explain why the region of Stockholm has a much higher per capita deaths than other regions. Stockholm has the only subway in Sweden, and it is speculated that elderly care workers are heavy users of it in order to operate multiple care homes from a central organization using employees that goes from one home to the next. In almost every other city in Sweden they tend to go by car.

But this again points towards the kind of restrictions that would be effecting in reducing the number of deaths. Stopping the subway, get people that work with risk groups to not be in places where there is a high risk of infections. Malmö in comparison has significant less movement within the city and people use the mass transport system a lot less. In practice there are buses and taxi, and not much else. A common remark is that Malmö is actually 4 smaller cities of different social status with very little intermingling.

One effective restrictions that some nations like Finland did early was to lock down the capital and impose significant restrictions locally in those regions. Treating people different within a country based on where they live is very unpopular, but as a strategy to prevent deaths it seems like something Sweden should have done. Again, it is not restrictions for "visit restaurants, go shopping, attend gyms and send children under 16 to school" that seems to be relevant takeaway from the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The public bought into the notion of 'Flatten the Curve'. It made sense to stop hospitals being overwhelmed and patients having to be triaged by age.

Sweden's approach of limited lockdown succeeded in flattening the curve. Existing medical facilities were sufficient.

In that way Sweden's approach should be seen as a massive success, and lockdowns all around the world should be ended. Additionally, we now have plenty of PPE, and understand how to better treat critical COVID patients. So the effective capacity of the healthcare system is even greater.

<comment><USER15> > Sweden's approach should be seen as a massive success

Unless your loved one was one of the 4500 who have died so far. Or the 50 or so who are likely to die today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been outspokenly critical of Sweden's approach on more than one occasion. I live in Malmö in the southern region of Sweden- where COVID-19 deaths were 3 weeks behind Stockholm.

The situation here was, for lack of a better term, inconsistent.

There are people locking down, and some restaurants are closing early. There Are people wearing masks- but in far greater numbers there are huge congregations of people. Masses of people, herding together in bars at night shoulder-to-shoulder[0].

People aren't taking it seriously, because "the rest of the world is overreacting and as long as we follow the rules we'll be safe" but people fall right back to not following the rules.

It seems like it only takes a few people to not follow the rules and then everyone around them forgets. Forgets about distancing. Forgets about not touching the face. Forget that there's even a pandemic at all.

Anders arrogantly believed that swedes follow the rules and that it would save us. And frankly we're fairing better than the UK- though the population density is far lower, and there's more single-person households than anywhere else in Europe.

I just don't think there's a workable argument for why it was a good idea. Except for that we were unable and wanted to make it look like it was part of the plan.

[0]: Sorry for the quality. [https://i.imgur.com/LVspmHs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/LVspmHs.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Well, I live in Stockholm and here is what I see: during the first few weeks (maybe a month) people really followed the rules. There were significantly fewer cars on roads, some parts of the city looked as if completely abandoned etc. But then the weather's become better, people have got tired of restrictions - and now it is back to usual (I don't dare say "normal"). But people are still much more careful than they were before COVID. What makes me feel good about Tegnell is that schools were not forcefully closed, otherwise economic hit would be much bigger.

<comment><USER16> That could be because Stockholm was hit so much harder than the Skane region in its entirety. People here might have thought it was "far off" and put it out of mind.

I don't mean to imply there has been no change, lots of businesses are requiring people to work from home, some restaurants wont let you sit indoors. There are stickers on the floor in ICA indicating where you can queue, and plexiglass around the cashiers.

However, it's very surface level in a lot of cases, people are still going to tightly packed bars, massing in large numbers in the parks, going for walks through crowded shopping streets. Gyms are open and I'm not sure that's the best idea in the world (COVID being transmitted easiest in a still air enclosed environment with lots of people exhaling forcefully).

But, I digress. I think when Swedes talk to me about Sweden's response to COVID they talk from a stockholmers mindset. But I am derided by Swedish friends in Malmo for avoiding contact as much as humanly possible.. Many of whom keep requesting that I join them in the Gym. Which seems like a really stupid idea to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tegnell has clarified what he meant, and thinks foreign media has misquoted him: [https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/anders-tegnell-there- are-t...](https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/anders-tegnell-there-are-things- we-could-have-done-better/)

As a follow-up to the above article, he furthermore said that he "sometimes feels like a personal punching bag, but that's something I'll have to take".

Tegnell is one to rarely, if ever, admit to being at fault. In my view, he's always had this air about him of infallibility. He's almost never wrong, and he's criticized every other country's way of counting cases and casualties at every opportunity, without giving any reasoning. He's also come with very inconsistent, almost asinine statements. The last one cheering that Sweden only had 8 new reported deaths this past Monday, even though that reporting always lags behind directly after weekends. When I read that quote I thought "but it'll be back to 50-70 reported deaths in a day or two like it's been for a month now". And not to toot my own horn, but I was right.

From where I sit, almost everything he says has an angle to downplay risks. There are no guidelines to wear masks in Sweden because "the science is not clear" of its efficacy (true-ish), but in the next breath he parrots things like "these kinds of viruses don't like the summer heat, so we expect the upcoming summer to improve things" which, from what I've read, is even more scientifically unclear.

Nevertheless, he is the public face of the Covid-19 and has an enormous fan club in Sweden. I'm sure several people will rush to his defense here as well.

</comment><comment><USER19> It is impossible to say what worked and what didn't work yet. The pandemic isn't over. And the reported mortality stats aren't reliable; there needs to be a good 6 months to figure out what the aggregate numbers really are.

It is too early to say whether the strategy succeeded or failed.

</comment><comment><USER20> The word "he" appears only once in the article and in a different context, Tegnel speaks about mistakes but not of all them are his. He leads a group of experts and an organization, he did not make the decisions himself.

<comment><USER21> Someone at some point has to take responsibility. That should be the head of the organisation or whoever is tasked with making the decisions. Whether it's a CEO, President, Prime Minister or the head of a public health authority.

<comment><USER22> Yes, Jocko Willink explains very well in this video

"At what level up the chain does extreme ownership stop?" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsMScRfjVC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsMScRfjVC0)

"When something goes wrong, where does it stop? [...] Ramadi, friendly fire incident... and I took ownership of it. Now you got to remember also [that] people below me in the chain of command said «no it's my fault», «no it's my fault» [...] I said «No, it wasn't your fault, it was _my_ fault. Now you could say... you could look at my boss and go «why wouldn't it be your boss' fault?», «why wouldn't it be _his_ boss' fault?» [...] why wouldn't you take it all the way up the chain of command to the president of the US, since the senior person in the US military is the president, why wouldn't he say «hey, Jocko's unit had a blue-on-blue and it's my fault», right? Theoretically, that's what Extreme Ownership is. Here is the deal: the goal of Extreme Ownership isn't just to take ownership. The goal of E.O. is to actually _solve the problem_."

For anyone to whom that sounds interesting, I recommend listening to that whole segment, 18 minutes, where he explains in detail how someone taking responsability _at the right level_ gets the problem solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> To be fair, they didn't have the resources to do it any other way.

For example, lack of gloves etc led to spread of covid in elderly care homes. That happened because countries like Germany stopped export of gloves and mask from their factories (and hijacked some shipments passing their borders).

<comment><USER24> Fair point about Germany, but locking down like the rest of Europe is not a question of gloves or medical equipment. There must have been different reasons for that decision.

<comment><USER25> Swedish and biased here, but as far as I understand a large share of the deaths come from nursing homes. The tactics to limit the spread in those homes failed. However, that is largely a separate question of policies for the broader population, which is what most news outlets have been reporting as controversial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yeah. Oops.

Maybe use the opportunity to apologize for scapegoating medical support workers who don't speak "good enough Swedish" to follow instructions. Same workers from similar background all over Europe of course, where authorities did a much better job with less xenophobia.

</comment><comment><USER12> Part of the blame lies with a (our) culture of putting all the old people in the same place to be (lonely) together.

These deaths would not have happened nearly as effectively if we had more intergenerational households.

<comment><USER27> I thought intergenerational households were one of thee reasons for the large death toll in Italy?

<comment><USER28> The nursing homes (as opposed to service homes) in Sweden are generally a "last resort", for elderly that are incapable.of taking care of themselves. Very fragile elderly with varying degree of confusion and dementia. For a Swedish nursing home the life expectancy after admission is something like 400 days.

The nursing homes has failed miserably at protecting their inhabitants in and around Stockholm. The debate about lacking funding and poor quality care has been going on for the past 2 decades. The recent stories has been about people walking from sick to healthy patients/inhabitants (I don't know the correct English term, sorry) without proper disinfection and sanitation, even though supplies have been available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none" \- Thomas Carlyle

</comment><comment><USER30> On one hand, it's good that he's intellectually honest enough to finally admit that "mistakes were made". It's a sign that he's still a scientist and not a full-on politician, who would never do that.

On the other, I wonder how one can sleep at night with the knowledge one was directly responsible for thousands of deaths. Or how can one's career recover from something like this.

<comment><USER31> >On the other, I wonder how one can sleep at night with the knowledge one was directly responsible for thousands of deaths.

He's not directly responsible for thousands of deaths. Not doing something that could have saved lives is different from actively doing something to hurt people. Otherwise we'd all be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths because we didn't spend a bit of money to donate more mosquito nets to Africa, where a huge number of people die every year from preventable malaria.

<comment><USER30> _> Otherwise we'd all be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths [in] Africa_

I'd argue that we are (and not just for mosquito nets), we just rationalize it away and forget it. Distance helps a lot, in that sense. But this guy is likely to meet or talk to people who were directly affected by his decision, basically every day for the rest of his life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here is a simple and pretty unbiased video (made by and american expat) of everyday life during the epidemic in Sweden: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI7nrqH_YnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI7nrqH_YnE)

</comment><comment><USER33> Typical values for the US: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and- pn...](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pneumonia- deaths-2008-2015.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER34> Can this virus even be controlled? Or rather, beyond a point, does it even make sense to try - without dismantling our current economic structures completely?

As soon as you open international borders and ease lockdowns, regions and countries with few cases will see cases rise. We got to our current situation with just a handful of imported cases. Now that there are millions of carriers, you can't possibly hope to contain it with people traveling everywhere for work and leisure. Quarantining incoming travelers isn't feasible, at least not without sacrificing international business and leisure travel completely (a huge chunk of the GDP).

This is a siege where the castle only has food for two months. Unless you expect reinforcements (i.e. a vaccine or cure), extending the siege mostly means starving to death.

<comment> a-saleh I think the point is to find a point.

I.e. I was watching with some degree of unease how some of our official in Czech Republic seem to have had a bit of a power trip with closing the borders, e.t.c.

Fortunately that seems to be over, with restrictions on travel to bordering countries being slowly lifted.

Now it seems, that just wearing masks in shops and public transport should be enough? Accompanied with remoting where possible? I.e. there are no more spikes, and we have had preschools and pubs open for two weeks already.

<comment><USER34> Are the borders open? That's the litmus test - can the cases be controlled with no travel restrictions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Whatever the ultimate merits, I find the admission of mistakes refreshing. Hard to imagine anyone in American or UK politics doing that.

</comment><comment><USER36> Michael Levitt has already shown the world a long time ago that COVID-19 is sub-exponential. Any competent mathematician can do that, just look at f'/f in a logchart (death per day / death total) look at the data of Germany - use 7 day averages to be surprised)

So going for herd immunity is most likely mistake. For something that destroys itself in the long term anyway (R0~0,7) something like "duck and cover" would have been the right strategy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wonder how recent events will influence the pandemics.

</comment><comment><USER38> There are at least 2 different perspectives to look at Sweden's strategy.

One is the long term view: Whether Sweden's approach will, when this pandemic is over, turn out to have produced a "better" outcome in regards to e.g. fatalities, severely sick, people who need rehab, economic performance and societal stability, in comparison to other countries. As is frequently being emphasized: It's too early for a verdict here. We'll know in hindsight.

But then there is another perspective: The one based on risk-reward, and based on what is the right thing to do in the moment for a democratic, humanist society that generally promotes values based on protecting lives, particularly of the weak.

Confronted with a new, evidently potentially very dangerous virus about which few things were known other than it created chaos in various places and led to many deaths, Sweden chose a gamble based on a rather bad risk-reward distribution. Let's say Sweden will turn out to be "right" in the long term (meaning other countries will eventually also end up with similar numbers of fatalities/infected per capita), then the reward will be at best moderate: A slightly better economy (as an export-nation, Sweden's economy suffers when other countries shut down regardless of Sweden's own strategy) and a bit more individual freedom for people to do what they wanted even during crisis times.

But if Sweden should turn out to be wrong (meaning that other countries manage to keep numbers of fatalities/severely sick much lower indefinitely, and economies will only do a bit worse, until we have a vaccine, or until the virus has mutated to become much weaker), then the downside is gigantic: Thousands of people whose life could have been saved, thousands more who had to fall severely sick who could have been spared this experience, a damaged global reputation (which is one of the most important things for Swedes: What others think of their country) as well as a moral identity crisis (because how to justify future signaling of moral superiority if one has just sacrificed thousands for an utilitarian ideal?!).

Ethics and moral aside, choosing a strategy with such a bad distribution of reward and risk strikes me as highly dubious.

Furthermore, based on my own personal ethical/moral set of values, the damage is done. Even IF Sweden will look better once we'll be out of the pandemic, the whole strategy was inevitably based on an ethically questionable gamble, which could have gone either way, and which as I see it sets a rather concerning precedent.

If one crosses a highly trafficked street with closed eyes, even if one makes it to the other side unharmed, the worst outcome is if one concludes that this was smart and should be repeated again in the future.

As I see it, Sweden went on a dangerous path, historically taken by those who turned out to be on the wrong side of history. I moved from Germany to Sweden in 2006 but I'm not sure anymore if this is a great country for the future. And it's emotionally very tough on me having to confront those thoughts.

<comment><USER17> Swedish authorities relied on their citizen to behave, follow rules and use common sense in general, plus some administrative measures that can be implemented only by organizations. To me this is much better than to force people into lockdown no matter what. This has shown (again) negative parts of the swedish mindset, but that is a different matter and possibly the current approach with COVID will help to improve (if not eliminate) those parts.

<comment><USER38> Let's hope you are right.

Edit: I clicked on your previous comments and saw one from some months ago where you wrote this: "Swedes tend not to think about "bad case", so if something does not go according to an optimistic plan - it sometimes comes as a great surprise for them"

This exactly in line with the current situation and my own assessment. So do you see a chance that this will be enough of a learning experience so in the future, Swedes (on a group level) will become better in factoring in the "bad case" in their decisions/thinking?

<comment><USER17> I really hope that this COVID situation will be a strong enough kick in the ass. Sweden as a country and as a social group is nowadays not swift enough to react to things turning bad, so it _has_ to learn to be proactive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>