What’s going on here?
Long story short: The US continues to be ravaged by the Covid beast. Sweden got off to an awful start but has regained the upper hand. Denmark and Norway hit back hard in the beginning, then eased up rather quickly. Now the Nordic kids are back in school while a good number of their US counterparts still have to contend with online instruction.
The trends are rather obvious. First, the Nordics*:
Now the poor US:
Why can’t the US get a handle on this beast? What are the Nordics doing now that continues to keep the Covid monster at bay? Is it partly cultural, as argued in this description of the Danes:
“Although the Danes are extremely friendly, they respect all year long what is called these days “social distancing” - the most important approach to reduce virus transmission. Indeed, as compared to Italians, French and Spanish, Danish people have few physical contacts. They do give hugs, but only to close family members or friends; they do not shake hands; they do not kiss each other to say hello; and generally speaking, they like to keep a decent social distance on public transportation and in other public places. The opposite is true in the southern European countries where physical interactions are the cement of relationships amongst family, friends and colleagues.” Olagnier & Mogensen (2020).
As with Denmark, so with Norway, where “Physical contact with other humans should be avoided at all costs.” (Medium). In contrast, the Swedes tend to be touchy-feely. To quote: “Physical interaction is a natural part of communication and just being. There doesn’t have to be an extremely deep relationship between the people involved” (Culture, Living in Sweden). Maybe the Swedes just took longer to adapt to social distancing than their Nordic cousins, because it went against their cultural grain. Not so the Danes and Norwegians, who were already practicing a cultural form of social distancing before Covid hit. What about Americans? According to the Cultural Atlas, we shake hands, high-five and hug quite a bit. Or at least we used to.
Of course, there’s more to the story. Sweden, for instance, never implemented a mandatory lockdown and they initially did a terrible job of protecting nursing home residents from the spreading infection. But I think I’m onto something. Culture matters.
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* Finland and Iceland should also be here, but their inclusion would not have added much to the overall argument.
Reference:
Olagnier, D., & Mogensen, T. H. (2020). The Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark: Big lessons from a small country. Cytokine & growth factor reviews, 53, 10–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cytogfr.2020.05.005