Johan Anderberg’s The Herd asks if Sweden’s relaxed pandemic response was ultimately worth it
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Sweden gained a special reputation among European countries. Its leaders seemed relaxed, even as falls rose across Europe, reaching tragic heights in Italy, and chose not to impose the same restrictions as their neighbors. The question was: why? And perhaps more importantly: did it work?
These are questions that the Swedish journalist Johan Anderberg addresses The herda gripping analysis of the Swedish answer, which examines how tensions between science, politics and
the policy increased when the virus persisted. If any book could turn a scientific debate into a thriller, this one would; and for the armchair experts at Covid-19 that many of us have become, it is a must read.
Anderberg tells how, when people went to pharmacies and asked for masks, they were often referred to the skin care procedure. Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, did not think that face protection was comfortable – or necessary. He noticed that the foreign journalists who interviewed him did not wear their face masks properly. “They poked themselves in the face all the time, took them off and put them on again.”
And when journalists attended the Public Health Agency’s press conferences in Stockholm, they were surprised that they were offered cakes from a common jar. “The controversial cookie jar was eventually removed and replaced with sweets that were carefully wrapped, albeit a little difficult to chew,” Anderberg states dryly.
During the peak of the pandemic, Tegnell became an unlikely figure of global interest as the driving force behind Sweden’s uncertain path. Schools remained open, young people danced in nightclubs; and Tegnell and his colleagues developed the controversial idea of herd immunity, or flock immunity.
It was not the politicians’ courage that controlled the Swedish way. Rather, Anderberg says,
the Prime Minister’s shyness allowed public health officials to take the lead.
Sweden acted as a kind of control group that allowed life to continue as usual despite the threat from Covid-19. Anderberg asks a critical question: were these Swedish researchers right, or were they ruthless?
Sweden had traditionally been a conservative country when it came to health: in the 1980s, it was the only democratic country that ordered the compulsory isolation of people with HIV. But somehow, in 2020, the Swedes were at the other end of the public health spectrum. Their reasoning was that if enough Swedes caught the virus, the population would avoid several waves of infection with the virus.
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Tegnell and his colleague Johan Giesecke were sure that they were right and for a while the population agreed with them; but when the deaths skyrocketed, Tegnell had to find another place to lock his bike to prevent it from being vandalized.
Its approach gave liberal Sweden some unexpected allies. Its public health experts found that their policies were praised by Republican politicians in the United States, including Donald Trump. They met Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak at Zoom, although “everyone involved promised not to mention anything about the meeting afterwards”.
The Swedish researchers also had Zoom talks with Irish politicians at Oireachtas. The discussion had little effect and shortly afterwards, Anderberg claims, “the small island had introduced some of the toughest interventions in Europe”.
How did Sweden achieve herd immunity? Anderberg’s answer is a qualified yes, but it’s complicated. Together with other European nations, the country experienced a second wave that led to the government finally imposing restrictions. But the other countries were hit harder and when it comes to Covid-related deaths, Sweden fell somewhere around the middle. (Johns Hopkins coronavirus hub places Sweden below the United Kingdom, the United States, France and others, but above Ireland in terms of deaths per 100,000).
For Anderberg, “Sweden abandoned its strategy just as the researchers’ predictions began to materialize.”
Many factors came into play – for example, Swedish households are not usually mixed with generations, which would reduce the risk of the elderly – but Anderberg frames the dilemma that Swedes faced as a choice between freedom and security. Their strategy meant that “a seven-year-old could go to school, eat school lunch and meet his friends every day. However, a 70-year-old was advised to stay at home.
The book was originally written in Swedish and the prose can be quite sharp. Anderberg’s descriptions of early bacteriological experiments also seem long.
The effects not only of Covid but of lockdown will be with us for many years to come, and take place in children’s changing paths. New research from the USA has found that teenagers suffered from increased abuse at home, both physically and mentally; and the number of suicide attempts increased sharply. The injury has been both acute and still ongoing.
If Sweden acted as a control group in the 2020 experiment, the results, as described here, justify a careful analysis.
“There was never a risk-free alternative,” Anderberg claims. “There has never been a road that guaranteed less death, less suffering than anyone else. There have just been different alternatives with different risks.”