Dissident Mama, episode 3 – Data & dialog with Olof

In this episode, I chat with Olof, a native Swede residing in the United States. He’s a data scientist with a degree in mathematics from Columbia University. We discuss COVID-19 statistics and the Swedish government’s response to the pandemic.

Image: US and Top 5 EU daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 people. By Bryn Bache at Flourish Team, April 21, 2020.

Articles mentioned in our chat: “Sweden Is Right: The Economy Should Be Left Open,” “Sweden’s Top Epidemiologist: COVID-19 Infections Flattening Under Policy of Individual Responsibility,” and “Sweden Resisted a Lockdown, and Its Capital Stockholm Is Expected to Reach ‘Herd Immunity’ In Weeks.”

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Comments

  1. BT_C0gg1n

    Great podcasts so far! Also, good job on dialing in the length. I’ve found that ~45 minutes is my limit on podcast lengths before my mind starts to wander 😀

  2. Daithi Dubh

    Gaining perspective has grown harder these days, what with the glut of information we’re exposed to on a moment-by-moment, day-to-day basis, and the accompanying number of opinions that are out there. We’re all pushed constantly to make snap decisions, often on the basis of this incomplete, agenda and hype-ridden, information. I’d like to think a field like Mathematics, Olof’s chosen field, and reputedly a “hard science”, would be more impervious to this, but I don’t think that’s the case. The observation that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics” obtains.

    What Olof attempts to do, to the contrary, is use a “slow”, considered approach to the data and statistics, thus allowing us to perhaps gain some real perspective, rather than simply react. How much of the reaction in fact by individuals all along the continuum, have been guided as much or more by the need to make a snap decision, and show themselves to be more caring and sensitive – to do something! – than by true perspective gained by deliberate thinking, guided by gathering and collating all the available data, and evaluating it according to time-honoured principles (which includes a reading of history!)?

    Thanks to you and Olof for helping us gain some of that missing perspective!

  3. William Estes

    Lesson: Sweden is full of adults who are concerned with the well-being of the whole of Sweden. The US is full of children who are concerned with political garbage.

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