Coronavirus: Sweden

The man who is being interviewed in the above photo is Dr. Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency (PHA) in Sweden. He devised its national strategy for handling the coronavirus (COVID-19). According to an essay published by Foreign Affairs, "Rather than declare a lockdown or a state of emergency, Sweden asked its citizens to practice social distancing on a mostly voluntary basis. Swedish authorities imposed some restrictions designed to flatten the curve: no public gatherings of more than 50 people, no bar service, distance learning in high schools and universities, and so on. But they eschewed harsh controls, fines, and policing." The strategy relies on the intelligence and responsible behavior of the Swedes.

In other words, the strategy relies on trust between the government and the citizens. The government trusts the citizens to act responsibly, and the latter trusts the government to make sound recommendations based on science.

An alternative to the trust strategy is the authoritarian strategy deployed by the Chinese government and the Californian government. Both governments use the police to shutdown their economies, to enforce social distancing, etc.

By contrast, the Swedish government (under Prime Minister Stefan Löfven) allowed its economy to operate mostly normally. According got a report by The Economist, "Swedes largely approve of their country's approach, with two-thirds saying in polls that the government is handling the epidemic well." Also, according to a report by The Christian Science Monitor, the health agencies in both Denmark and Finland recommended the trust strategy, but the Danish and Finnish governments chose the authoritarian strategy.

In an interview with Joyce Barnathan of the International Center for Journalists and an interview with Stephen Sackur of HARDtalk (which is produced by BBC World News), Dr. Tegnell explains aspects of the trust strategy.

The previous chief epidemiologist at the PHA is Dr. Johan Giesecke. He had hired Dr. Tegnell. In an interview published by UnHerd, Dr. Giesecke provides additional details about the Swedish strategy.

How effective is the trust strategy? As of September 1 (09:22 GMT), 5,808 of 10.23 million Swedes succumbed to the coronavirus, and 187,737 of 328.2 million Americans died from it. The Swedish death rate of 568 deaths per million people is about 127% of the American rate of 572 deaths per million.

Those rates are based on undercounts of the actual number of coronavirus deaths. If we use the number of excess deaths (suggested by a report from The Economist and a report from the New York Times) to estimate the actual number of deaths, then the Swedish death rate would be even lower than the American death rate.

Finally, if we include the deaths of despair due to job loss caused by the authoritarian strategy, the overall Swedish death rate would also be lower than the overall American death rate.

note
1. The coronavirus strategy in Japan resembles the trust strategy in Sweden.
2. California has a large number of residents (e.g., Hispanics) who reject Western culture, of which civil liberties are an important component. Such anti-Westerners support using the power of the state to compel Californians to wear face masks, to socially distance, and to close non-essential businesses. Uncontrolled immigration has changed the character of California and most other states.
3. According to a report by the New York Times, "'Today, all of the European countries are more or less following the Swedish model, combined with the testing, tracing and quarantine procedures the Germans have introduced, but none will admit it,' said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health, in Geneva. 'Instead, they made a caricature out of the Swedish strategy. Almost everyone has called it inhumane and a failure.'"
4. According to an analysis published by Foreign Affairs, "in the United States, which has by far the highest absolute number of reported COVID-19 deaths, several states are easing restrictions at the urging of President Donald Trump, who despite bashing the Swedish model, is pushing the country toward something very similar."