How Swede It Wasn’t

  

  Sweden early in the coronavirus breakout… then later

“The Swedish response to this pandemic was unique and characterized by 

a morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable laissez-faire approach.” 

March 22nd Scientific Study of Sweden’s Failed Approach to COVID-19

Way before there was a vaccine, Swedish authorities were hell-bent on pursuing “life without restrictions” under a misguided belief that COVID-19 would soon find stasis and herd immunity would take it from there. At first, the disease did not explode. This led many around the world, most notably in Trump’s America, to believe that it was more harmful to lockdown, impose masks and social distancing, thus decimating the economy, than to mandate serious impositions on lifestyle choices with those restrictions. That initial impression of “Swedish success” persists to this very day. But soon after this initial and very brief seeming success, Sweden became the poster-nation for explosive COVID infection rates and major rises in mortality rates. Simply, the Swedish approach was horrifically wrong.

The above-noted study – “Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden” by a litany of experts under the aegis of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, was published in Nature News, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 9, Article number: 91 (2022) – paints an ugly picture. Here is their abstract, a crushing post-mortem, supported by reams of statistical and medical facts:

Sweden was well equipped to prevent the pandemic of COVID-19 from becoming serious. Over 280 years of collaboration between political bodies, authorities, and the scientific community had yielded many successes in preventive medicine. Sweden’s population is literate and has a high level of trust in authorities and those in power. During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway. In this report, we try to understand why, using a narrative approach to evaluate the Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific evidence and integrity. We argue that that scientific methodology was not followed by the major figures in the acting authorities—or the responsible politicians—with alternative narratives being considered as valid, resulting in arbitrary policy decisions. In 2014, the Public Health Agency merged with the Institute for Infectious Disease Control; the first decision by its new head (Johan Carlson) was to dismiss and move the authority’s six professors to Karolinska Institute. With this setup, the authority lacked expertise and could disregard scientific facts. The Swedish pandemic strategy seemed targeted towards “natural” herd-immunity and avoiding a societal shutdown. The Public Health Agency labelled advice from national scientists and international authorities as extreme positions, resulting in media and political bodies to accept their own policy instead. The Swedish people were kept in ignorance of basic facts such as the airborne SARS-CoV-2 [the formal name for COVID-19] transmission, that asymptomatic individuals can be contagious and that face masks protect both the carrier and others. Mandatory legislation was seldom used; recommendations relying upon personal responsibility and without any sanctions were the norm. Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives. If Sweden wants to do better in future pandemics, the scientific method must be re-established, not least within the Public Health Agency. It would likely make a large difference if a separate, independent Institute for Infectious Disease Control is recreated. We recommend Sweden begins a self-critical process about its political culture and the lack of accountability of decision-makers to avoid future failures, as occurred with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Writing for the March 31st Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik notes additional aspects of this report that stunned him, as “experts” hid facts from Swedish citizens and purposely tried to force an impossible “herd immunity”: “The Swedish government, they report, deliberately tried to use children to spread COVID-19 and denied care to seniors and those suffering from other conditions.

“The government’s goal appeared geared to produce herd immunity — a level of infection that would create a natural barrier to the pandemic’s spread without inconveniencing middle- and upper-class citizens; the government never set forth that goal publicly, but internal government emails unearthed by the Swedish press revealed that herd immunity was the strategy behind closed doors.

“Explicit or not, the effort failed. ‘Projected ‘natural herd-immunity’ levels are still nowhere in sight,’ the researchers wrote, adding that herd immunity ‘does not seem within reach without widespread vaccinations’ and ‘may be unlikely’ under any circumstances… That’s a reproach to the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely criticized white paper endorsing the quest for herd immunity and co-written by Martin Kulldorf, a Sweden-born Harvard professor who has explicitly defended his native country’s policies.” 

To all the anti-vaxxers, those who believe masks to be frivolous impositions, this is a huge lesson which they are unlikely to learn. And while we may have to learn to live with COVID, now tamed with vaccines and treatments, there are a vast array of new viral infections brewing “out there,” perhaps more like the infamous Spanish Flu from the WWI era, waiting to feast on hordes of human beings, particularly in close-quartered large cities. It is indeed time for the United States to embrace scientific and medical facts and for people to know: 1. not only is there no constitutional prohibition against severe restrictions during a severe pandemic, 2. there also is no right cavalierly to reject containment and insist on having a right to infect others accordingly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and fact-averse nations almost never do well militarily, economically, politically or, of course, medically.