Sweden as a case study on what to do (and not do) during a pandemic
Sweden and its attitude to the pandemic has become a Rorschach test for people’s views on COVID-19 restrictions. If you think that suspensions, travel bans and mask mandates were the right approach, then you probably see Sweden as a failure. Unlike almost all other rich nations, it refrained from doing these things. And the result was a much higher death rate than the neighbors Norway and Denmark. Approximately 13,000 Swedes have died since the pandemic began – half of them in nursing homes. In comparison, just about 700 The Norwegians have died of covid-19.
But Sweden’s deaths are lower than other European countries that locked in and demanded masks, such as France, Italy and Spain. So if you are not a fan of that policy, you probably see Sweden’s light touch as a success story.
What do the Swedes themselves really think?
Journalist Mallory Pickett, who recently wrote “Sweden’s pandemic experiment“In the New Yorker, says that the country’s response to the coronavirus was led by the best epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, who did not agree with the idea of a lockdown.
“He and his colleagues really felt that from a public health perspective, the suspensions did not make sense. If they closed the schools, they would lose a large part of their care staff because they would be at home and take care of their children, she says.
Instead, the country’s strategy surrounded physical distance, limited large gatherings, and stayed at home while you were sick.
Public health officials did not embrace the idea of masks or asymptomatic spread — at least until the winter of COVID-19.
“During the winter and the Christmas holidays, it really got very bad. And at that time, the strategies changed a bit. There were some form of regional shutdowns, and masks are now recommended but in a very limited sense. It is public transport during rush hour, and only for people of a certain age. ”
Pickett’s father-in-law lives in Sweden, and she says he has a severe lung condition, but he followed public health recommendations during the past year.
“He and my mother-in-law had no masks. They still had their friends over for dinners and really could not convince themselves to wear masks and stop doing so, she says. “Until very recently, I would say when the health authorities started recommending people to wear masks, masks were something that was difficult for us to even talk about because we would just go into the same debates about the evidence for and against masks over and over again.”
Pickett says it is still unclear why the pandemic was not as bad as it was in other regions, such as California. And now studies of how different regions reacted to the pandemic may be crucial for future pandemic preparedness.
“I think there are obviously things about the Swedish strategy that have failed but … it may be that Sweden, just by limiting large gatherings and really consistently recommending distance, could prevent a certain number of cases as well as countries that recommended lockdowns. This suggests that it is worth evaluating how each country reacted to the pandemic and trying to understand why Sweden was not as bad as we might have predicted. ”