We'll know if he's right in about a year or so. Until than I think it might be best to expect the worst.
The criticism of this strategy is getting harsher every day. Last week a group of 22 scientists called on the government to take charge and stop relying on the "talentless officials" of the Public Health Agency (Folkhälsomyndigheten). What has been happening in the background is new laws has been put into place to give the government greater abilities to put emergency measures in place, such as closing schools and instituting curfews, without having to take it through parliament. My brother who may or may not be doing "essential work" was asked a few weeks back by his boss if he would be affected if schools and daycare were to close, so a partial closing of schools and daycare for all but the children of essential workers is definitely being prepared for. (Data source) It's interesting how concentrated the outbreak is to Stockholm and the neighboring regions where many people commute to Stockholm. The "sport holiday" when people went to the Alps on ski trips occur on different weeks in different parts of the country, Skåne were I live had its holiday a week before Stockholm, so maybe the spread in the ski resort in Austria and Italy hadn't really skyrocketed by then. Another difference between Malmö and Stockholm is that a) Malmö stopped visitors to retirement homes earlier than Stockholm and b) ran information campaigns in multiple languages.So Sweden has based its policies on two premises: (1) The coronavirus can only be managed, not suppressed. Short of going full Wuhan on the entire planet, we’ll have to live with it. (2) People won’t tolerate severe lockdown for more than a month or two, since boredom, isolation, and economic desperation will get overwhelming.
I begin to suspect Sweden is right. One of their premise is that the lock-down is not tenable. And it is not. In France we already schedule to stop it less than 1 month from now: The 11 May. At that time, all healthy people will go out, and suddenly give new vehicle for the virus. And we will get another death wave. The plan of sweden is to let the virus reach healthy people (for whom the death rate is around the one of the flu.. If you're not vaccinated against flu, you are already not afraid of that death rate).. so once it go through most people it cant spread further. The point being, that you can let the frail and old people go out sooner, since most people will stop been a vehicle earlier, than with the lock-down strategy. Plus economically it is more sound. I dont get the backslash for the sweden strategy. As the dude say: the moment the lockdown is stopped, the death rate of other countries will reach Sweden, while Sweden will already have much immunized people. Make perfect sense
What do you think of this article? https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-swedish-experiment-looks-like-it-s-paying-off
This was two days ago, yesterday the same professor came on the news saying disregard these results, since another group at Karolinska without his knowledge was conducting another experiment at the same time, asking people who had already had the virus to come in and donate blood plasma to try giving it to sick people. So far I've kind of avoided having a strong opinion on the government response, and politically I think they've played it right by letting the Public Health Agency take the lead. The impression I've got of the people in charge, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and the people around him, is that they're competent and ready to change their mind if it turns out the current response is not enough. Swedish people generally trust government agencies, especially during times of distress. Even though the debate is raging on Twitter and in the newspapers, most people seem to be content with the response so far. On a personal level, I'm happy to not be living under heavy restrictions. My sister recently had a baby and my parents were able to drive to Stockholm to pick up her kids so her friend who has diabetes wouldn't have to come and babysit. I still see my closest friends once a week if we're all healthy, but I haven't traveled to see my family since February. Most people didn't seem to travel during Easter, so I feel like enough people can be trusted to take necessary precautions to prevent the spread. The longer this goes on, the more people might begin to get lazy and forget about the danger, but I guess that might have happened even with restrictions. Someone said recently that if our strategy works out, it will be the return of unbearable Swedish smugness abroad. I guess time will tell.A recent test at Karolinska suggested that 11 per cent of people in Stockholm had developed antibodies against the virus. Professor Jan Albert, who has led these tests, says the rate is most likely higher – perhaps substantially higher. So far they have only tested a small sample of blood donors and they can only donate if they are healthy and free of symptoms.
Norway: population 5.36m, 165 COVID fatalities Denmark: population 5.81m, 355 COVID fatalities Finland: population 5.51m, 94 COVID fatalities Sweden: population 10.23m, 1,540 COVID fatalities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-says-controversial-covid-19-strategy-is-proving-effective UK: population 66.65m, 16,060 COVID fatalitiesAs of Sunday, Sweden had reported 1,540 deaths tied to Covid-19, an increase of 29 from Saturday. That’s considerably more than in the rest of Scandinavia, but much less than in Italy, Spain and the U.K., both in absolute and relative terms.