For what it's worth this is quite similar to my experience here in Sweden except:
- you speak to a nurse on the phone, not a non-medical receptionist (frankly, that sounds insane)
- the Vårdcentral (equivalent to surgery) prioritizes children in my experience
- your Vårdcentral is not allocated, but you can choose one. Some have better capacity, some have worse.
- there is another layer between Vårdcentral and Akuten in a hospital called Närakuten where you can go to get checked out. The waiting times are anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours.
I would even guess that the British situation is not unique but the medical system is overloaded everywhere in Europe.. Most people I know, including myself pay for private care.
Even if people who took the low mortgage counted with a rate hike like yours they probably didn’t count with the energy prices hiking so much AND the food prices hiking so much AND all of this happening within ~9 months.
This argument does not take into account the fact that the majority of Swedish population lives in cities. The Stockholm metro area has about 2M people out of 10M in Sweden. Then there’s Malmö and Göteborg..
Or if you turn it around, if Germany bought Siberia and their population density went down, would they see the an improvement in the situation?
not OP, but yes, I backup both our Mac machines (TimeMachine) and my Linux machine (restic) to a Synology NAS that is in turn backed up to a cloud. I ended up using the Synology cloud because the setup was easy and they have a datacenter in the EU.
I’m from CZ but live in Sweden. I don’t think there is any magic (no gene difference as someone here suggested..)
Here’s the things I noticed that were clearly different between the two countries:
1. The rules were clear from the start and didn’t change much. FHM said from the beginning that the virus is here to stay and set the rules so that they are sustainable (most importantly: schools were never closed). There was no screw-unscrew-screw-… loop
2. Many more people worked from home here than in CZ. I don’t know what to attribute this to, it can be because Swedes are generally better acquainted with technology or that there are more jobs that can be done from home in Sweden.
3. People actually follow the rules (for the most part..there still were student parties and such). This can be an effect of people trusting their politicians and the government agencies but maybe just a different mentality. I still remember that during my visit to Prague people at the Billa supermarket at the Prague train station were absolutely not keeping distance and were touching bagels (rohlíky :-)) without any gloves. Masks and lockdowns won’t save you then…
4. People are generally much fitter here. You won’t see the typical Czech beer belly, in general everyone keeps themselves in shape and eats quite well.
Contrary to what many might think the level of healthcare is about the same in my experience.
I’m really no Tegnell fanboy, many things about him irk me a lot (his constant picking on other countries the most) and I wish the Swedish government took a more active role sooner rather than let FHM steer everything for about 9 months, but in general I think the Swedish strategy was good.
Sweden is producing its own domestic fighter jets to this day (Saab Gripen). It’s latest generation was unveiled in 2017. So they have the experience but my assumption is that developing a next gen fighter is just too expensive and wasteful for such a small country.
I think it’s Finland. I’m in Sweden and I’m almost sure that my compensation is not public. What you can do IIRC is to request a credit check on someone which would contain the income and the tax paid but then the person is notified who requested the data. Typically this is done when you apply for a mortgage.
For example, in Sweden, you can get a 'tax calendar' (a bit like an old-fashioned phonebook, but with total pay instead of phone numbers). You can buy relevant pages conveniently online.
The factors you mention definitely don’t help but you’d be surprised how much of HBP is just genetics. I’m slim, run at least three times a week and ran a marathon two years ago, don’t eat much meat, rarely drink, non smoker and yet I have HBP and had to start taking pills recently. In my case it doesn’t help that both parents suffer from the condition.
But saying that you have HBP == you live an unhealthy lifestyle is just not true.
But isn’t it very common to account for the white coat syndrome?
I was recently diagnosed with HBP and the process went like this:
- doctor took the measurement, was very high
- asked me to measure at home, call if it was still high (it was, but much lower)
- invited me over, I got a blood pressure monitor for 24h. That showed a borderline 130/85) higher BP. For comparison, he was reading 160/100 at his office..
This is just to illustrate that doctors should know about the white coat syndrome and shouldn’t diagnose you based on readings in their office only.
Competent and caring doctors know about it and mind it, yes. Finding those that do have free patient slots is quite a quest, though. Especially outside large urban centers.
You will always find a great cardiologist or dentist in Prague. Ostrava is already much more challenging and Bruntál means playing it on hard mode :)
- you speak to a nurse on the phone, not a non-medical receptionist (frankly, that sounds insane)
- the Vårdcentral (equivalent to surgery) prioritizes children in my experience
- your Vårdcentral is not allocated, but you can choose one. Some have better capacity, some have worse.
- there is another layer between Vårdcentral and Akuten in a hospital called Närakuten where you can go to get checked out. The waiting times are anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours.
I would even guess that the British situation is not unique but the medical system is overloaded everywhere in Europe.. Most people I know, including myself pay for private care.