Sweden’s lonely corona adventure has cost thousands of lives
The important lessons to learn for future outbreaks.
Europe is hopefully through the worst corona wave. But new outbreaks may come over the summer. That is why it is so important that we now reflect on what is good and bad policy in the fight against the virus.
It’s not like some commentators have written, that we don’t know what works and that only future can tell. Some nations mainly in East Asia have been immensely successful so far and are likely to continue so. Deeply divided states under incompetent leadership, US and Brazil, are massive disasters.
There is an international gold standard for corona response. The closer your country follows it, the fewer will die. The recipe is called social distancing, extensive testing, active infection tracking and effective isolation of infected.
Asian countries reacted early and resolutely, following this recipe for success. No one has died in Vietnam. Mongolia does not even have cases of domestic infection. In South Korea and Singapore no one has died inside institutions for elderly and extremely few outside. New Zealand has declared victory over the virus and started hugging again. In Norway we have not been as effective as the Asian countries, but our number of deaths is also very low.
As I wrote two months back Sweden’s response to the corona crisis is one of the most risky political experiments we have seen in peacetime in any well-governed country.
Sweden will soon pass 5,000 dead, compared with 594 Danes, 324 Finns and 239 Norwegians. The death rate per capita in Sweden is eight times the Norwegian and 75 times the death rate in South Korea.
Sweden ranks in the least enviable sixth place in the number of deaths per capita in the world. Countries with death tolls higher than Sweden are all either exceptionally poorly led like the United States or they got the virus with tremendous power early and were overwhelmed such as Italy. Sweden is different. They got the virus at about the same time as Norway but have followed a calculated strategy that has resulted in many more deaths.
This strategy has failed in all important aspects:
• A less strict shutdown was supposed to be good for the economy but has not helped. Swedish industry has no brighter prospects than Norwegian and much worse than Asian. It is not government measures that have destroyed the economy, but the virus. If people fear getting infected at work, they stay home. Swedes have been able to go a little more to cafes than most other Europeans and some schools have stayed open. They may have felt more “freedom” since common sense in social democratic Sweden has been voluntary, not determined by the state as in «bourgeois« Norway. It has not yielded financial gain, only a much higher mortality rate.
• The idea that Sweden could protect the weakest through the outbreak without comprehensive measures for everyone proved disastrous. The weakest are those who are most dependent on others. They are the hardest, not the easiest, to isolate. They need the family, the health care and public services the most. With a lot of free infection out in the community, it is extremely difficult to shield the weakest. Half of the dead in Europe have died in institutions, infected by health professionals or relatives. The Swedish concept of the nation as a «People’s Home» was created just to help when people are at their weakest, when we need others the most.
An undercurrent in the Swedish debate is that it is not so disastrous if the elderly and people with so called underlying diseases die. They will die anyway. Norwegian leaders deserve credit for never harboring such thoughts. An Italian survey shows that those who have died in Italy lost an average of eleven years of their lives. If we transfer this to the Nordic countries, Swedish mortality compared with Norway has cost around 40,000 years of life. Much joy and many years of love are lost.
• Sweden has not achieved “herd immunity”. In an article in the prestigious US journal Foreign Affairs, three well-known Swedish scientists argue that the world will follow Sweden. They claim that Sweden has not planned for herd immunity in its corona response, but more than suggests that this is exactly what Sweden intended. Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell often hints at the same. The best thing to say is that this is a very long shot. Only a few percent of the population have developed antibodies. Scientists believe herd immunity requires that 60% have been exposed to the virus. If we use the lowest estimate for corona mortality, 0.7%, that will mean that 42,000 Swedes will die on the way to herd immunity. Tens of millions of people will die if the world follow Sweden’s example. This is a risk few are willing to take.
This summer, it may be logical for Norway to open the borders for holiday trips to Denmark and Finland, or even to Greece, the Baltic states or China. These are countries with the same or better infection situation than us. For the first time I can remember, we may see Nordic cooperation without Sweden.
While corona measures in almost all countries have been led by presidents and prime ministers, in Sweden they have been left to professionals. Anders Tegnell has been the Swedish corona general, not Prime Minister Løfven or others with political responsibility for the country. There is a long tradition in Sweden for directorates and government offices that are much more powerful and beyond day to day political control. I even noticed it clearly when we in Norway tried to collaborate with Sweden on peace processes. Swedish politicians could not make flexible political initiatives or spend money, everything was determined through long-term letters of allocation to the civil service. As wars cannot be left to the generals, crisis management cannot be outsourced to experts. Politicians need to take the lead, while listening to professionals.
The thing is, you see, that the strongest man in the world, is he who stands most alone, writes Henrik Ibsen famously. History is full of examples of minorities being right. But fortunately, it is more often that common sense managed by the many is right. Sweden’s lone passage through the corona crisis has cost thousands of people’s lives. Europe must not be tempted by this dangerous political experiment.
About the author
Erik Solheim (Twitter: @ErikSolheim) is the former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. He has previously served as a Minister of the Environment and Minister of International Development in Norway.
