The guy is a scientist and his answers have to be viewed from that angle. A politician goes for spin and tries to project confidence; "I am not sure this is the right approach" from a politician usually means "hell, no!". Tegnell's answer means just that -- he is not sure. Which is a normal way for a scientist to feel as there are always uncertainties and when we choose an action we are often not sure for a while if that action is optimal or not.
I personally feel a lot of respect to Tegnell. Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic: there are no mountains of corpses on the streets there are a number of countries with lockdowns and worse per capita death rates; second wave, if appears, will likely go much easier on Sweden, etc.
I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. This will not make their argument weaker; it might still mean that lockdowns are a better option. But it would also open policies for discussion and debate. Good policies will still win. But then they win by merits, not because of trying to silence any opposition. My 2c.
I believe Tegnell is brilliant, but that is where my accolades stop.
Scientists (which Tegnell is, effectively) are not meant to be politicians, and them getting into political matters is an excellent way to corrupt science. Although Sweden is not a place where one would look to think of corruption, there are still serious ethical issues with this. This is also a form of experimentation in COVID-19 that is among the riskiest and most dangerous in the world.
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the significant differences in death rates in developed countries for COVID-19 were attributed mostly to whether COVID-19 severely penetrated care homes, mostly designed for the elderly. We know that Sweden did not have proper PPE protection in these care homes to protect their most vulnerable, and it still does not. Sure, the death rates worldwide have been going down, at least in developed countries, because, perhaps we have become smarter at treating it, despite having no effective treatment for it.
Still, it is not prudent to expose people needlessly to a virus that we know is deadly--and we know little about. A lot of these deaths could have been prevented, with relatively little pain, although it takes a lot of sacrifice.
One of the countries I am sovereign to, Croatia, (the other being the USA) has not had any COVID-19 cases for 3 days in a row [1]. You know, a former war-torn Yugoslav country that is up and rising and just became part of the EU in 2013. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. Even war-torn, economically suffering countries can be successful at these sorts of endeavors. It just requires brave political leaders (along with a strong emphasis on public health--which a lot of ex-Yugoslav countries actually have) who can deal with crises (which Croatia has legitimately dealt with before).
Interestingly (to me anyway ;-) ) I recall when I heard about the Japanese government's plans (where I live). They had a whole special about what the plan was, what the rationale was, how they thought it would go, etc, etc. I thought they were bonkers. "This is going to go down badly", I thought.
But, looking back on it, I'm pretty impressed with the results. Good foresight? Luck? Not really sure, but you can't really argue with results. As time goes on, you can see that it's a bit like surfing those huge 50 foot waves. If you can manage it, everything will be fine. If not, you are crushed. Fingers crossed.
> Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic
The only countries worse off than Sweden are significantly poorer - besides Belgium, which seems to be the only country counting correctly (e.g. untested excess deaths in Covid proximity are included).
The most similar countries to Sweden, regarding political structure and wealth, are Denmark and Norway, which have 20% and less than 10% of Swedens death rate, respectively. I'd say it's safe to assume that at least 80% of Swedish deaths could have been avoided with a conventional approach.
How is 4.500 dead, beeing worldwide #1 in deaths pr capita 2 weeks running, allround #7 in deaths and climbing, not qualify as catastrophic?
And this nonsense of how Sweden will be better of in a second wave.. why? Because people are already dead?? They are not even done with the first wave, they are litterally #1 in deaths pr capita.
> I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies.
Sadly, the discourse affects the results. When everybody believes a lockdown will work, it does. When about half the population isn't sure about it, it just wastes money.
It would be great to have some countries go all-in in one strategy and others all-in in another, and compare results later -- but when people talk, you end up with lots of countries effectively doing something in the middle, without the advantages of either extreme but essentially all of the costs.
I have been following the situation in Sweden closely.
As far as I can see, calling Tegnell a scientist is incorrect. He may have a Ph.D but does decisively not behave scientifically. Instead he should should be called a bureaucrat, which much better describes his behavior.
They believed Covid-19 was much more infectious and much fewer people were seriously affected, than we now believe.
This was understandable at the time, since it's known that early on in an epidemic only serious cases are noted, and so infectiousness is underestimated and mortality usually overestimated. However, towards march it became definitely clear for most everybody else that covid-19 was fairly serious for many people and the Chinese mortality numbers were not vastly exaggerated.
Because of his belief in an exaggerated infectiousness, Tegnell believed herd immunity would be reached fairly fast. Most of april Tegnell spent on justifying his faulty assumptions, believing herd immunity was to be had in Stockholm in may. To justify this, they used highly dubious modelling and wishful thinking:
https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/125408476749626163...
Sweden currently is now sitting in a horrible quagmire. The infection is still uncontrolled and mortality, though below its peak, is still significant. Testing infrastructure has still not been built out, and is still not done on all symptomatic cases. Likely because the infection was seen as having a similar severity to flu, and therefore it was presumed better to just stay home for a few days, than to go and get tested.
Tegnell can not admit having been wrong, because of bureaucratic honor. The population which are, like in all other countries, generally not very scientifically literate or interested, have not quite fully grasped the situation. But judging by the latest polls of confidence in the government, many are starting to suspect something is not quite right.
I fully support a very open debate, and believe all opinions have a right to be heard. But the Swedish situation should not be confused with science. It saddens me to say, that only very few countries have been more passive, bureaucratic and unscientific handling this crisis. And that seems to have cost quite many lives and much suffering for swedes.
I don't think you can compare strategies in Sweden and France. Scandinavia, Japan, etc. are known to be places where people are civic-minded, responsible adults, where wallets left on benches make their way back to their owners with the money still inside. You can count on Swedish or Japanese people to do the responsible, advised, thing without a police officer standing behind them with a nightstick. That's not true of other countries and that's why those other countries have had to take heavy-handed approaches and still found little success in them.
Tegnell has been wrong about almost everything. Hard to see for me why that level of incompetence deserves respect. But he seems to have a lot of charisma so many people mistake that for brilliance.
In one Swedish podcast, he was described with the analogy of a “manipulating boyfriend”. Quite fitting.
This is a good argument and it somewhat changed my mind.
But I would add that if you take a risky decision in a scenario where the potential downside is mountains of corpses on the streets (or a Lombardy scenario), and then it turns out not to happen, you might have not made the objectively right decision. In hindsight, you got lucky, so it was OK; but maybe confronted with the same situation again you should choose differently. (I guess Tegnell would argue that he had reasons to be confident that Sweden wouldn't become Italy, and that it wasn't just a matter of blind guessing.)
> instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies.
I get the impression social media is killing off this sort of approach (or maybe it's some other cultural driver). There seems to be a clear trend toward monoculture for everything.
Just an obvious question to ask: have we human-being ever gain immunity to common flu? Then how could those Hurd-immunity advocates be so sure it would ever work?
The amount of misinformation (or the very least, confused statements) in this thread is high for being HN. Soo many people know much about Sweden without ever setting their foot here. Interesting that.
The world's apparent obsession with the Swedish strategy isn't about Sweden at all. It is about their own strategies, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing, whatever that was. There's myriads of variables that differ between Any two countries.
Sweden's path has been conventional. The attention is coming from nations that executed extreme and even revolutionary policies of universal home arrest, "shutting" an entire nation like a coffee shop, and sending a 30%+ of the workers onto unemployment.
This ultimately comes back to the so-called "Trolley problem,"[1] which some posters in this thread have brilliantly acknowledged. Would we throw the whole world out of work, or imprison them, or bankrupt them, to save 1 life? If not, what is the limit or deciding principle?
A large part of this confusion has been caused by Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM).
Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM) have clarified their strategy as:
Keep the number of infected people down at any one time to not overwhelm the health system.
Groups at risk for severe disease should quarantine themselves.
But they have also repeatedly indicated that they don't want to stop the spread of infection completely.
And that they are not running a strategy aiming at herd immunity, though when most people have been infected there will be herd immunity.
That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic.
Well, Sweden's 4:10000 death rate is alarming. In only a few months. And their confident approach (doing very little) in the face of scant information was bold. With lives at stake, its natural to be alarmed/scandalized at their lack of effort to control a pandemic.
You are 100% correct about the world looking at Sweden through a lens to validate their own opinions (and enacted strategies) about how best to deal with the virus.
I've watched over the last few months as people in the US flip flopped:
Center-left folks who cite Sweden as an economic model but trashed the way they handled the virus due to their support of lockdowns.
Center-right folks who normally claim Sweden is nothing like the US and therefore we can't emulate their economic policies, but then point to them as a model for reopening.
Similarly, every single mention of antibody tests on here results in a similar collection of highly-intelligent people not recognizing their own drive to validate their preconceived beliefs.
I have lived in Sweden, and see why people living there would believe that Sweden’s policy is normal. But it’s not. It’s not only killing Sweden’s population but also recklessly endangers the rest of the EU. I really hope borders stay closed towards Sweden
I would suppose the world's obsession would be seeing a lot of people dying and thinking in a perhaps mistaken way "that seems unnecessary" and then being upset enough by this idea to not think as highly of the Swedish government as it might otherwise wish people to think of it.
A lot of course being in the eye of the beholder.
I think that seems a less cynical and perhaps simpler explanation for why people would be obsessed with Sweden.
Countries have various institutions and organisations tracking and reporting on the virus within their borders. Then there's the press and the locals publishing info on various channels.
One doesn't need to set foot in Sweden to form an opinion about how things are going.
It scares me that there are people (even in this thread?!) who say Tegnell is some wicked scientist experimenting on the swedish population.
Feels like some people read a buzzfeed article on viruses and suddenly they are an expert that somehow figured out the things that the government agency for national health did not. "No, my extremely limited knowledge about virology tells me that I am right and the only logical conclusion is that Tegnell is a wicked scientist". For gods sake... Grow a brain, will you?
Sweden made some very bad choices and a lot of people died unnecessarily. Compare with Portugal, same population, right next to Spain, lower GDP, a fraction of the deaths. There is no excuse, no 'second wave', no economic payoff, no wait and see.
Scientists are trained to make judgments based on experimentation and evidence. In a fast moving novel pandemic situation, where there is no time to carry out experiments, where evidence is confused and hard to corroborate, their utility is much reduced. That is why politicians exist, to make these hard decisions. It is unfair to pillory scientists such as Tegnell, as it is the politicians who abdicated responsibility in the face of this crisis that should rightfully face condemnation.
Except of course, there was evidence, from China, Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere. It was clear what needed to be done, and how to do it. Shame on Sweden, and other places, for not heeding that guidance.
I was under the impression that quarantine was an option only to "flatten the curve" (and make it easier for the hospitals to treat people) and that the same amount of people would die regardless (from the virus), is this wrong?
Why compare with Portugal? Why not compare with some other country with similar deathrate as Sweden but completely different choices? Maybe because you assertion about "very bad choices" then wouldn't hold any water.
It might still be true, but the actual support for it seems to just be cherry-picking.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust the numbers reported by the Portugal, in particular the reported number of daily COVID-19 deaths, I feel the numbers are being misreported.
I have been closely following the progress of the situation in the country and the leadership is very messy and very clueless about the entire situation, both from the government and from the portuguese health agency in particular.
Sweden’s strategy failed on its own terms. There is absolutely no arguing that. Their first goal was to protect the vulnerable, and they failed miserably at that. Fundamentally because Tegnell resisted the fact that asymptomatic carriers existed.
One could argue, like some Iraq war proponents do, that the idea was ok for Sweden, but the failure was in execution. But one can not argue that it wasn’t a significant failure.
Seems to me that we won't really know if the Swedish approach was a disaster or not until economies are reopened, second waves happen or don't, etc. The game isn't over.
90% of all covid-19 deaths in Sweden have been people over the age of 70 [1] which is the only group of the population which have been quarantined. So it's arguable what difference a nation wide quarantine would have made.
Of those over 70, half of the deaths were in care homes and another 26% had home care [2].
Many of the workers in care homes have reported that their companies/bosses won't allow them to stay home when they're showing symptoms and some have been forced to work without protective equipment.
There have "only" been 42 deaths under the age of 50 [2].
It’s still too soon to tell but it seems like the economic impact of a thorough lockdown (New Zealand) isn’t much greater than most people staying home voluntarily (Sweden). The difference seems worth it to control the pandemic. Two weeks from now it looks like New Zealand (with zero cases left) with have fewer restrictions than Sweden.
He predicted that the virus was circulating many times more widely than people thought (20-25%) -- and posited much of his strategy on that.
In reality that appears to be closer to 7%.
He was also particularly wrong in attacking other countries - and the underlying Imperial College study that influenced them - for locking down in the way they did.
18.1m people came in and out of the UK between January and March in the UK -- nearly twice the entire population of Sweden. What was optimal for Sweden would never have been optimal for others.
It's mind blowing how the media spinned his defense, with headlines like "Sweden admits they were wrong and should have locked down", whereas he said exactly the opposite.
He said: we should have had more labs, locked down retirement homes, but we shouldn't have asked students to stay home.
There is no convincing evidence that Sweden’s approach has led to a materially worse outcome, and in fact if you look at the overall health of the country considerable evidence that outcomes will be much better in the long term.
Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns.
It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.
NoW that the virus is better understood and we know that the people at risk are mostly people at the end of their life the continued tyrannical lock down Of the general population in many countries is a failure of leadership, not a success.
The large number of hysterical articles condemning the Swedish approach reflects the fact that people don’t want to admit that they made a mistake and want to desperately justify doing something really stupid.
«Adopting the Swedish approach» after three months of expanding test capacity, ensuring PPE availability, instituting WFH routines where possible, adopting slightly-inconvenient disinfecting routines and having everyone know to keep distance and report cold symptoms, is not following the Swedish approach. It is something completely different.
The R number will be lower at this later stage than they were in an early-hit country with no preparation.
The biggest mistake Tegnell did for Sweden, was wasting the first month of the epidemic out of hubris. This laid the groundwork for the persistent epidemic they have today, which stands in obvious contrast to their neighboring countries — most of which now have a daily life similar to Sweden, except with the epidemic under control.
10x per capita difference in deaths as compared to Norway, 5x to Denmark. Similar for other markers. Initial conditions similar, except for different response from leadership.
> It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.
It seems to be working in Vietnam, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, and others ... even China probably.
Those countries have achieved local elimination or very close to it and are reopening (or never locked down) and have not yet had to (re)turn to wholesale lockdown.
So "Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns" is, at best, not proven.
I think epidemiologists shoot themselves in the foot as a profession when they started talking about herd immunity, which is the one situation we are trying to to avoid in infections, and really the entire reason their profession exists. We could reach herd immunities without them but the toll is dramatic and untenable. Politicians mistook the term to mean some kind of solution and made it a buzzword, but it really is the worst solution.
Swedens situation is not the worst in the world, but they really did not win much with their "strategy" either. Talk of "reaching herd immunity in a few months" was irresponsible and heavily fatalistic. As a country with a big public sector they could easily have followed a slightly more conservative approach. An "initial freeze, then plan accordingly" would be a more rational way to go. It was also irrational to assume that their economy can "rebound faster" when most of the rest world is shut down.
Epidemiology did not wear its best suit in this pandemic, and will lose a lot of respect in the eyes of many[1]. Scientists have a duty to inform people when their results are being misused or misinterpreted
I find it very surprising that someone would rely on unvalidated mathematical models for this, that goes for the Imperial College people as well as Sweden. Are they even able to fit the parameters in retrospect?
Anyone with a background in mathematical modelling should be extremely cautious of applying models in situations where there are serious ramifications to getting the wrong answer.
Sweden's economy, which relies
heavily on exports, is expected to
shrink 7% in 2020
[neighbours] dropping mutual border
controls but would keep Sweden out
Sometimes it's better to go with the crowd, even if you're right.
My takeaway from the NYT article[0] was that Sweden's approach to coronavirus hasn't left them totally overwhelmed primarily because Swedes willingly self-lockdowned and distanced almost as much as people under government-mandated lockdowns. So while some like to point to them and say "see, we could've stayed totally open," the reality is that they did lockdown but it came as a decentralized decision rather than a centralized order. Because they did effectively lockdown, their economy is expected to be impacted similarly to the rest of Europe[1]. Is my interpretation incorrect?
[1] "Preliminary evidence shows Sweden has suffered similar economic effects as its neighbors: The Swedish Central Bank projects the country’s G.D.P. will contract by 7 to 10 percent this year, an estimate on par with the rest of Europe. (The European Commission projects the E.U. economy will contract by 7.5 percent.)" (Ref [0])
There's a deep problem of all these comparisons of economies with public health policies:
Markets and money are vehicles for making agreements. They are all about negotiation. They are imminently and manifold fungible. They are contrivances. A deadly virus is not.
Let's also not forget for every death from C19 there are a handful-dozen people who survive to lifelong health problems from the episode. That has a cost, too.
I'm glad he came out against that Bloomberg article it was a obvious misquote. You could tell. not only did they not attached the audio. He literally has interviews about a week or 2 before talking about how well it was going.
Regardless about how you feel about Sweden's strategy Bloomberg's obvious manipulation is garbage.
Other countries in Europe also have lead epidemiologists and scientists (or technical bodies) making the recommendations that then get turned into policy. Those scientists in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, France, Spain, Italy are as good as Tegnell is.
Also, the medical approach to people getting sick with COVID-19 has significantly improved over the first month (e.g., early hospitalisation instead of sending a sick person to isolate themselves at home, weeding out drugs that did not work from those that worked, introduction of drugs to control trombosis and secondary damage from the virus, better approaches to when and how use ventilators, etc.).
That means that a number of the deaths that have occurred within the Swedish policy could have been avoided by delaying the infection. More importantly, Sweden's approach has not even achieved a significant level of immunity, as Swedes have been self-imposing social distancing and even a 'lockdown' (working from home).
In an interview in "unherd", Giesecke estimated that the deaths in UK without lockdown would be in the 12,000 (when they where 13,000), then corrected himself to 24,000 (they are almost 40,000 now), and then said they will not be 10x 12,000.
On freedom. The lockdown for reasons of public health is a limitation of our freedom that has been accepted (except in Sweden) by their citizens in their respective contracts as a society (constitutions, laws, etc.). So, per se, it's a limitation akin to not driving over a certain speed in certain roads. Moreover, many people (and students) have reported that the lockdown has been "liberating" - and for others have been depressing (it never rains to everyone's liking)
On ending the lockdown. Tegnell and Giesecke repeat and repeat and repeat that countries imposed a lockdown without a strategy out. Well that's just dire false. When the lockdown was being discussed, the press was already pointing that issue and several strategies were being considered (press from March already discusses the measure by measure approach).
But, whereas other countries are looking conservatively with the evidence (that could be flawed because it is small and incomplete) that they already have, Sweden is relying in an evidence that will only be apparent in the future (if the events turn out to be advantageous for that approach).
If each country had been given an "ant population" with some infected individuals and their epidemiologists needed to manage the epidemic long term while a cure for the ant's illness is found, maybe, the Sweden's approach would have made more sense... At least, most people wouldn't have had much feelings for those ants that could have lived a couple of days longer.
That no one has ever heard about, that seemed to have no lasting impact, and occurred when the population was younger and 25% smaller (thus having a proportionally much greater impact).
Without the media panic, COVID-19 would have come and gone as a unusually deadly flu wave, nothing more.
[+] [-] ptero|5 years ago|reply
I personally feel a lot of respect to Tegnell. Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic: there are no mountains of corpses on the streets there are a number of countries with lockdowns and worse per capita death rates; second wave, if appears, will likely go much easier on Sweden, etc.
I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. This will not make their argument weaker; it might still mean that lockdowns are a better option. But it would also open policies for discussion and debate. Good policies will still win. But then they win by merits, not because of trying to silence any opposition. My 2c.
[+] [-] disabled|5 years ago|reply
Scientists (which Tegnell is, effectively) are not meant to be politicians, and them getting into political matters is an excellent way to corrupt science. Although Sweden is not a place where one would look to think of corruption, there are still serious ethical issues with this. This is also a form of experimentation in COVID-19 that is among the riskiest and most dangerous in the world.
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the significant differences in death rates in developed countries for COVID-19 were attributed mostly to whether COVID-19 severely penetrated care homes, mostly designed for the elderly. We know that Sweden did not have proper PPE protection in these care homes to protect their most vulnerable, and it still does not. Sure, the death rates worldwide have been going down, at least in developed countries, because, perhaps we have become smarter at treating it, despite having no effective treatment for it.
Still, it is not prudent to expose people needlessly to a virus that we know is deadly--and we know little about. A lot of these deaths could have been prevented, with relatively little pain, although it takes a lot of sacrifice.
One of the countries I am sovereign to, Croatia, (the other being the USA) has not had any COVID-19 cases for 3 days in a row [1]. You know, a former war-torn Yugoslav country that is up and rising and just became part of the EU in 2013. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. Even war-torn, economically suffering countries can be successful at these sorts of endeavors. It just requires brave political leaders (along with a strong emphasis on public health--which a lot of ex-Yugoslav countries actually have) who can deal with crises (which Croatia has legitimately dealt with before).
[1] https://koronavirus.hr/en
[+] [-] geoffreymcgill|5 years ago|reply
https://i.imgur.com/oiybcsx.png
Sweden will easily pass France in the next few days, yet new infections are now 500% greater than those of France.
Again, please keep in mind this is a per capita chart.
[+] [-] mikekchar|5 years ago|reply
But, looking back on it, I'm pretty impressed with the results. Good foresight? Luck? Not really sure, but you can't really argue with results. As time goes on, you can see that it's a bit like surfing those huge 50 foot waves. If you can manage it, everything will be fine. If not, you are crushed. Fingers crossed.
[+] [-] bildung|5 years ago|reply
The only countries worse off than Sweden are significantly poorer - besides Belgium, which seems to be the only country counting correctly (e.g. untested excess deaths in Covid proximity are included).
The most similar countries to Sweden, regarding political structure and wealth, are Denmark and Norway, which have 20% and less than 10% of Swedens death rate, respectively. I'd say it's safe to assume that at least 80% of Swedish deaths could have been avoided with a conventional approach.
[+] [-] martin_bech|5 years ago|reply
And this nonsense of how Sweden will be better of in a second wave.. why? Because people are already dead?? They are not even done with the first wave, they are litterally #1 in deaths pr capita.
[+] [-] knzhou|5 years ago|reply
Sadly, the discourse affects the results. When everybody believes a lockdown will work, it does. When about half the population isn't sure about it, it just wastes money.
It would be great to have some countries go all-in in one strategy and others all-in in another, and compare results later -- but when people talk, you end up with lots of countries effectively doing something in the middle, without the advantages of either extreme but essentially all of the costs.
[+] [-] zosima|5 years ago|reply
As far as I can see, calling Tegnell a scientist is incorrect. He may have a Ph.D but does decisively not behave scientifically. Instead he should should be called a bureaucrat, which much better describes his behavior.
The catastrophe that is swedish covid-19 strategy, probably started as something like this: http://www.openias.org/swedens-covid19-strategy
They believed Covid-19 was much more infectious and much fewer people were seriously affected, than we now believe.
This was understandable at the time, since it's known that early on in an epidemic only serious cases are noted, and so infectiousness is underestimated and mortality usually overestimated. However, towards march it became definitely clear for most everybody else that covid-19 was fairly serious for many people and the Chinese mortality numbers were not vastly exaggerated.
Because of his belief in an exaggerated infectiousness, Tegnell believed herd immunity would be reached fairly fast. Most of april Tegnell spent on justifying his faulty assumptions, believing herd immunity was to be had in Stockholm in may. To justify this, they used highly dubious modelling and wishful thinking: https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/125408476749626163...
Sweden currently is now sitting in a horrible quagmire. The infection is still uncontrolled and mortality, though below its peak, is still significant. Testing infrastructure has still not been built out, and is still not done on all symptomatic cases. Likely because the infection was seen as having a similar severity to flu, and therefore it was presumed better to just stay home for a few days, than to go and get tested.
Tegnell can not admit having been wrong, because of bureaucratic honor. The population which are, like in all other countries, generally not very scientifically literate or interested, have not quite fully grasped the situation. But judging by the latest polls of confidence in the government, many are starting to suspect something is not quite right.
I fully support a very open debate, and believe all opinions have a right to be heard. But the Swedish situation should not be confused with science. It saddens me to say, that only very few countries have been more passive, bureaucratic and unscientific handling this crisis. And that seems to have cost quite many lives and much suffering for swedes.
[+] [-] monadic2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ponker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imartin2k|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordgrenville|5 years ago|reply
But I would add that if you take a risky decision in a scenario where the potential downside is mountains of corpses on the streets (or a Lombardy scenario), and then it turns out not to happen, you might have not made the objectively right decision. In hindsight, you got lucky, so it was OK; but maybe confronted with the same situation again you should choose differently. (I guess Tegnell would argue that he had reasons to be confident that Sweden wouldn't become Italy, and that it wasn't just a matter of blind guessing.)
[+] [-] dmix|5 years ago|reply
I get the impression social media is killing off this sort of approach (or maybe it's some other cultural driver). There seems to be a clear trend toward monoculture for everything.
[+] [-] mrjin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KarlKemp|5 years ago|reply
In Sweden, 4,500 people have died. In neighbouring Norway, 237 people died. Even adjusted for population, Sweden has 10x the deaths.
I'm a scientist as well and my math skills say their strategy sucks.
[+] [-] heracles|5 years ago|reply
The world's apparent obsession with the Swedish strategy isn't about Sweden at all. It is about their own strategies, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing, whatever that was. There's myriads of variables that differ between Any two countries.
[+] [-] drtillberg|5 years ago|reply
Sweden's path has been conventional. The attention is coming from nations that executed extreme and even revolutionary policies of universal home arrest, "shutting" an entire nation like a coffee shop, and sending a 30%+ of the workers onto unemployment.
This ultimately comes back to the so-called "Trolley problem,"[1] which some posters in this thread have brilliantly acknowledged. Would we throw the whole world out of work, or imprison them, or bankrupt them, to save 1 life? If not, what is the limit or deciding principle?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
[+] [-] zosima|5 years ago|reply
Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM) have clarified their strategy as:
Keep the number of infected people down at any one time to not overwhelm the health system.
Groups at risk for severe disease should quarantine themselves.
But they have also repeatedly indicated that they don't want to stop the spread of infection completely.
And that they are not running a strategy aiming at herd immunity, though when most people have been infected there will be herd immunity.
That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JPKab|5 years ago|reply
I've watched over the last few months as people in the US flip flopped:
Center-left folks who cite Sweden as an economic model but trashed the way they handled the virus due to their support of lockdowns.
Center-right folks who normally claim Sweden is nothing like the US and therefore we can't emulate their economic policies, but then point to them as a model for reopening.
Similarly, every single mention of antibody tests on here results in a similar collection of highly-intelligent people not recognizing their own drive to validate their preconceived beliefs.
[+] [-] legulere|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|5 years ago|reply
A lot of course being in the eye of the beholder.
I think that seems a less cynical and perhaps simpler explanation for why people would be obsessed with Sweden.
[+] [-] blub|5 years ago|reply
One doesn't need to set foot in Sweden to form an opinion about how things are going.
[+] [-] catears|5 years ago|reply
It scares me that there are people (even in this thread?!) who say Tegnell is some wicked scientist experimenting on the swedish population.
Feels like some people read a buzzfeed article on viruses and suddenly they are an expert that somehow figured out the things that the government agency for national health did not. "No, my extremely limited knowledge about virology tells me that I am right and the only logical conclusion is that Tegnell is a wicked scientist". For gods sake... Grow a brain, will you?
[+] [-] v77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somewhereoutth|5 years ago|reply
Scientists are trained to make judgments based on experimentation and evidence. In a fast moving novel pandemic situation, where there is no time to carry out experiments, where evidence is confused and hard to corroborate, their utility is much reduced. That is why politicians exist, to make these hard decisions. It is unfair to pillory scientists such as Tegnell, as it is the politicians who abdicated responsibility in the face of this crisis that should rightfully face condemnation.
Except of course, there was evidence, from China, Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere. It was clear what needed to be done, and how to do it. Shame on Sweden, and other places, for not heeding that guidance.
[+] [-] dependenttypes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heracles|5 years ago|reply
It might still be true, but the actual support for it seems to just be cherry-picking.
[+] [-] pedroaraujo|5 years ago|reply
I have been closely following the progress of the situation in the country and the leadership is very messy and very clueless about the entire situation, both from the government and from the portuguese health agency in particular.
[+] [-] thawaway1837|5 years ago|reply
One could argue, like some Iraq war proponents do, that the idea was ok for Sweden, but the failure was in execution. But one can not argue that it wasn’t a significant failure.
[+] [-] rfrey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nounaut|5 years ago|reply
Of those over 70, half of the deaths were in care homes and another 26% had home care [2].
Many of the workers in care homes have reported that their companies/bosses won't allow them to stay home when they're showing symptoms and some have been forced to work without protective equipment.
There have "only" been 42 deaths under the age of 50 [2].
[1] https://www.svd.se/90-procent-av-alla-doda-i-covid-19-over-7... [2] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/halften-av-alla-doda-over...
[+] [-] viburnum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] butler14|5 years ago|reply
He predicted that the virus was circulating many times more widely than people thought (20-25%) -- and posited much of his strategy on that.
In reality that appears to be closer to 7%.
He was also particularly wrong in attacking other countries - and the underlying Imperial College study that influenced them - for locking down in the way they did.
18.1m people came in and out of the UK between January and March in the UK -- nearly twice the entire population of Sweden. What was optimal for Sweden would never have been optimal for others.
[+] [-] hkai|5 years ago|reply
He said: we should have had more labs, locked down retirement homes, but we shouldn't have asked students to stay home.
[+] [-] bobthemover|5 years ago|reply
Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns.
It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.
NoW that the virus is better understood and we know that the people at risk are mostly people at the end of their life the continued tyrannical lock down Of the general population in many countries is a failure of leadership, not a success.
The large number of hysterical articles condemning the Swedish approach reflects the fact that people don’t want to admit that they made a mistake and want to desperately justify doing something really stupid.
[+] [-] marvin|5 years ago|reply
The R number will be lower at this later stage than they were in an early-hit country with no preparation.
The biggest mistake Tegnell did for Sweden, was wasting the first month of the epidemic out of hubris. This laid the groundwork for the persistent epidemic they have today, which stands in obvious contrast to their neighboring countries — most of which now have a daily life similar to Sweden, except with the epidemic under control.
10x per capita difference in deaths as compared to Norway, 5x to Denmark. Similar for other markers. Initial conditions similar, except for different response from leadership.
[+] [-] microtherion|5 years ago|reply
The estimates I have seen suggest that the people dying lose, on average, 10 years of their life. That's not exactly insignificant.
[+] [-] roca|5 years ago|reply
It seems to be working in Vietnam, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, and others ... even China probably.
Those countries have achieved local elimination or very close to it and are reopening (or never locked down) and have not yet had to (re)turn to wholesale lockdown.
So "Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns" is, at best, not proven.
[+] [-] DagAgren|5 years ago|reply
Four thousand people would like to have a word with you, but can't, because they are dead.
[+] [-] geoffreymcgill|5 years ago|reply
New cases (7 day average): https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png
Total deaths: https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png
[+] [-] buboard|5 years ago|reply
Swedens situation is not the worst in the world, but they really did not win much with their "strategy" either. Talk of "reaching herd immunity in a few months" was irresponsible and heavily fatalistic. As a country with a big public sector they could easily have followed a slightly more conservative approach. An "initial freeze, then plan accordingly" would be a more rational way to go. It was also irrational to assume that their economy can "rebound faster" when most of the rest world is shut down.
Epidemiology did not wear its best suit in this pandemic, and will lose a lot of respect in the eyes of many[1]. Scientists have a duty to inform people when their results are being misused or misinterpreted
1. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/wh...
[+] [-] confuseshrink|5 years ago|reply
Anyone with a background in mathematical modelling should be extremely cautious of applying models in situations where there are serious ramifications to getting the wrong answer.
Hubris.
[+] [-] hyperpallium|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wycy|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/world/europe/...
[1] "Preliminary evidence shows Sweden has suffered similar economic effects as its neighbors: The Swedish Central Bank projects the country’s G.D.P. will contract by 7 to 10 percent this year, an estimate on par with the rest of Europe. (The European Commission projects the E.U. economy will contract by 7.5 percent.)" (Ref [0])
[+] [-] nickbauman|5 years ago|reply
Markets and money are vehicles for making agreements. They are all about negotiation. They are imminently and manifold fungible. They are contrivances. A deadly virus is not.
Let's also not forget for every death from C19 there are a handful-dozen people who survive to lifelong health problems from the episode. That has a cost, too.
[+] [-] DeonPenny|5 years ago|reply
Regardless about how you feel about Sweden's strategy Bloomberg's obvious manipulation is garbage.
[+] [-] ggrrhh_ta|5 years ago|reply
Also, the medical approach to people getting sick with COVID-19 has significantly improved over the first month (e.g., early hospitalisation instead of sending a sick person to isolate themselves at home, weeding out drugs that did not work from those that worked, introduction of drugs to control trombosis and secondary damage from the virus, better approaches to when and how use ventilators, etc.).
That means that a number of the deaths that have occurred within the Swedish policy could have been avoided by delaying the infection. More importantly, Sweden's approach has not even achieved a significant level of immunity, as Swedes have been self-imposing social distancing and even a 'lockdown' (working from home).
In an interview in "unherd", Giesecke estimated that the deaths in UK without lockdown would be in the 12,000 (when they where 13,000), then corrected himself to 24,000 (they are almost 40,000 now), and then said they will not be 10x 12,000.
On freedom. The lockdown for reasons of public health is a limitation of our freedom that has been accepted (except in Sweden) by their citizens in their respective contracts as a society (constitutions, laws, etc.). So, per se, it's a limitation akin to not driving over a certain speed in certain roads. Moreover, many people (and students) have reported that the lockdown has been "liberating" - and for others have been depressing (it never rains to everyone's liking)
On ending the lockdown. Tegnell and Giesecke repeat and repeat and repeat that countries imposed a lockdown without a strategy out. Well that's just dire false. When the lockdown was being discussed, the press was already pointing that issue and several strategies were being considered (press from March already discusses the measure by measure approach).
But, whereas other countries are looking conservatively with the evidence (that could be flawed because it is small and incomplete) that they already have, Sweden is relying in an evidence that will only be apparent in the future (if the events turn out to be advantageous for that approach).
If each country had been given an "ant population" with some infected individuals and their epidemiologists needed to manage the epidemic long term while a cure for the ant's illness is found, maybe, the Sweden's approach would have made more sense... At least, most people wouldn't have had much feelings for those ants that could have lived a couple of days longer.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ReticentVole|5 years ago|reply
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden...
What happened in 1993?
A Flu Pandemic...
That no one has ever heard about, that seemed to have no lasting impact, and occurred when the population was younger and 25% smaller (thus having a proportionally much greater impact).
Without the media panic, COVID-19 would have come and gone as a unusually deadly flu wave, nothing more.