
Man behind Sweden’s controversial virus strategy admits mistakes - nreece
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behind-sweden-s-virus-strategy-says-he-got-some-things-wrong
======
marcell
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)

~~~
INTPenis
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.

~~~
Lewton
> 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

~~~
mytherin
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.

~~~
Lewton
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

------
alkonaut
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.

~~~
Lewton
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

~~~
alkonaut
> 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.

------
cm2187
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.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
> 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)

~~~
bagacrap
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.

------
argonaut
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.

~~~
diggan
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).

~~~
alkonaut
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.

~~~
mensetmanusman
Absolutely, this is the definition of ‘wisdom’

------
belorn
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.

~~~
Lewton
> 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

~~~
belorn
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.

~~~
Lewton
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

~~~
belorn
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.

------
ReticentVole
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.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> 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.

------
dijit
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)

~~~
yaris
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.

~~~
dijit
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.

------
moogly
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.

------
roenxi
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.

------
2rsf
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.

~~~
timc3
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.

~~~
AlbertoGP
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.

------
alpanka
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).

~~~
wukerplank
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.

~~~
jacobwal
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.

------
onyva
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.

------
mensetmanusman
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.

~~~
goto11
I thought intergenerational households were one of thee reasons for the large
death toll in Italy?

~~~
bjoli
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.

------
twelvechairs
"The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none" \- Thomas Carlyle

------
toyg
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.

~~~
logicchains
>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.

~~~
toyg
_> 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.

------
mediascreen
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)

------
jakeogh
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)

------
puranjay
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
puranjay
Are the borders open? That's the litmus test - can the cases be controlled
with no travel restrictions?

------
downerending
Whatever the ultimate merits, I find the admission of mistakes refreshing.
Hard to imagine anyone in American or UK politics doing that.

------
WildParser
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.

------
qbaqbaqba
Wonder how recent events will influence the pandemics.

------
imartin2k
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.

~~~
yaris
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.

~~~
imartin2k
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?

~~~
yaris
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.

