the810

There is no doubt that the infection rate is going up, but there is very little evidence it is linked to sports holiday and frankly, I don't see any in your post. The increase was significant way before the holiday and I find it likely to be linked to more chaotic approach from Swedish authorities since late December.

Anyway, since those posts got moved to another thread it is no longer relevant to the original discussion. My point was that Sweden is getting more stable in terms of covid restrictions and guidelines, so it is once again a good place to be in during upcoming months.

CPH-Flyer

I still wonder a bit on what category I am supposed to put Tegnell in. Incompetent, derelict of duties, or just the classic case of being promoted in to a job due to tenure and coincidence rather than ability to perform that job.

Either way he has been proved nothing but wrong every step of the way. It could probably make some wonder why he is not removed from the front line of the Corona efforts.

GUWonder

The infection level has been going up in Sweden as and after the Swedish ski schools got busy due to people traveling to go skiing. And the Swedish ski schools got busy even in the days before the official school holidays started, as kids were being taken out of school and people were taking advantage of remote working ability. And there is plenty of evidence that the highest per capita positives in the past several weeks tracked exactly along the routes of the localities by which people go to the major ski destinations in Sweden. Go track by locality where the highest Covid-19 case per capita increases were during January to March on a week-by-week basis. It's a story that Tegnell just wants to dismiss.

The Swedish case increase became way more significant -- predictably so -- during and after the winter sports breaks because infection rises follow increases in mobility and socializing (including increased social activity related to holidays). Cases don't rise from people sheltering in place.

The Swedish authorities approach to the pandemic has been a mess from the beginning of the pandemic and continues to be, and it shows clearly in the fact that Sweden's done so much horribly worse than most countries in the world and its neighbors with Covid-19 deaths and case rates. And this is despite Sweden's massive advantages coming into the pandemic: strong fiscal position, more widely accessible healthcare system, low population density, low household occupancy level, its advantageous age and obesity profile, way less inter-generational living, and so on.

Sweden has been anything but become more stable in terms of its pandemic response recently; it's just more chaos on top of chaos that lets Covid-19 rip through the country more so than happens elsewhere in its neighborhood. But the country is an exemplar at keeping a stiff upper lip about it.

Lots of job security for the already-privileged and "in-group"-boosting habits generates a kind of work environment where "consensus" is easier to reach. But where consensus and "in-grouping" rules the roost, complacency and tolerance for sub-optimal results can become the natural output. Challenging the status quo is just not done .... as it's just "not Swedish" to do so. So of course Tegnell coasts along.

I can't help but to think what Geely must have really thought about its efforts with Volvo in Sweden.

GUWonder

Swedish schools are going back to in-person learning next month for the 16-18 year-olds. Should make the public transport companies quite happy to get packed again during the busy times for going to and from those schools.

Maybe this is a prequel to graduation parties becoming bigger this year than last year, since those buses can be like party buses at the peak times for those kids going to/from school/lunch/etc., so just "bring it home" with the partying and more.

With Sweden almost de facto encouraging Easter/spring break escapes (which in some ways have already started), let's see what comes next with cases and the infection scene in Sweden.

the810

Isn't he? A lot of what the Swedish government did between December and February was very un-Tegnellish, so I always assumed he doesn't call the shots anymore although they do keep him as a face of the strategy (perhaps because he has a lot of support from the public).

It's true that last few outputs seem more like going back to his strategy again, though. Perhaps it's a reaction to rise in cases after the government took over?

Anyway, I fail to see how he was wrong. I understand the criticism of Tegnel setting wrong goals and strategy (that's really matter of opinion and priorities), but it seems to me that he achieved what he claims he wanted to achieve. Health care never collapsed, covid results are average by European standards (6600 excess deaths in 2020 is a pretty good result) and they managed to protect society, education, etc. as they claimed they will. Swedish restrictions are sustainable in a long term - they are annoying but I can imagine living with them for one or two more years. That can't be said about other countries in Europe that are bound to reopen soon because people can't take the pressure anymore.

Yes, Tegnel's strategy has been wrong from purely epidemiological point, but public health is more than just not getting covid. He always said that. You may disagree with him but he didn't fail in the sense of not achieving what he claimed.

GUWonder

Tegnell's Sweden has the worst per capita deaths for this in the Nordics, and it's far worse with Sweden than for all of Sweden's neighbors; And Sweden's infection situation is systematically far worse than is the case with its neighbors.

Sweden's economy is not generally better off for these deaths and disabilities than its neighbors. Sweden's schools for minors haven't necessarily performed better than Denmark and Finland and Norway during this pandemic; but then again generally those Swedish schools are under-resourced and have relatively week output. Swedish healthcare systems "collapsed" more than was the case in Denmark, Norway and Finland. In Sweden they even decided to just give morphine out to Covid-19 cases instead of providing any meaningful intervention healthcare to far more people per capita than was the case in its neighbors. If that isn't a sign of a collapse in healthcare outcomes and healthcare ethics, then what is.

Restrictions with regard to this pandemic need not be sustainable in the long term; the restrictions are meant to be temporary since a pandemic like this is not long-term. A year or two of what has been going on with pandemic response measures -- at least in the Schengen zone, the UK, the US and Canada -- is far removed from my idea of what constitutes the "long-term".

Sweden is "reopening" and it doesn't change whether or not "people can't take the pressure anymore". Other parts of Europe -- places that had far more rigid rules for a while than Sweden ever had -- are also "reopening", and they are doing so whether or not "people can't take the pressure anymore".

Tegnell has been repeatedly wrong. Starting from his failure on the contact tracing front and his misleading indications about the spread within Sweden early on in the pandemic, to his support for pursuing natural herd immunity, to his eager disregard for the potential risks to "let it rip" with children and the rest of society, to his repeated boosterism claims about "natural" immunity levels in Sweden, to his downplaying risks of various activities spreading this virus and its variants, to his counter-messaging dog whistles, various misleading statements and foot-dragging so as to try to "let Sweden be Sweden" -- pandemic or not.

Tegnell protected Swedish society? Which Swedish society? Let's see what has gone on with socio-economic disparities and division in Sweden during this pandemic compared to what has gone on with its neighbors during this pandemic.

Saving lives faster is what better saves society and the economy during this pandemic. Was Tegnell's objective really to protect Swedish society from being hit by the pandemic? He seems to have failed at that, as Sweden ended up with disproportionately way more deaths and disabilities from this pandemic without having given its society and economy any massive improvements in outcomes over its neighbors.

nacho

Of course the healthcare doesn't collapse if you denied treatment to the elderly. I have seen many articles with healthcare workers saying "Jag orker inte mer". I think the triage works, not FHM's "strategy" (if there is even one). There are a lot of people in Sweden who are suffering from long term Covid now and that's going to be expensive for Sweden.

GUWonder

What's interesting about FHM's "strategy" is that it seemed built upon a weird dichotomy of wanting Sweden to go for "natural herd immunity" and being more eager about getting "natural herd immunity" than to buy time for getting to vaccine-induced herd immunity. Did Tegnell & Co really believe that natural herd immunity for this coronavirus would be possible without it also being probable to develop a vaccine to get to vaccine-induced immunity? Some may find it fruitful to do an examination into what Tegnell and his associates have been communicating about vaccines throughout their career and particularly during the course of 2020.

the810

Yes, if we cherry-pick countries that are doing better and only compare Sweden to them, then it will of course look bad for Sweden. But the fact is that Sweden is average by EU standards (the last time I checked a few weeks ago it was actually the median member state by covid deaths). It is also important to note that while most countries report much higher excess mortality than official covid deaths, Sweden actually had excess mortality lower than reported covid deaths by 30% (in 2020). That also speaks volumes and I hope we will eventually see some studies into that.

Social benefits of the Swedish model are undeniable. I understand a lot of people think it's not "worth it" and that Tegnel's strategy is wrong. But it doesn't mean it failed - it works the way it was meant to work.

Where Tegnel was wrong was that he was/is a bit too sceptical about the vaccine, possibly due to his previous experience with the swine flu.

CPH-Flyer

If mediocrity is good, then yes I guess Sweden might not be doing too badly after all. I'll have to try to see if I have an old target setting from my manager where I am encouraged to strive to be average. But indeed, if we set the bar low enough, everyone is doing well.

The tricky part of comparing across borders does actually make me strongly believe that comparing across the Nordic region is a much more relevant than comparing more broadly in Europe. There are much bigger similarities in the social and society structures, plus much of the start of the pandemic happened in closer parallel.

Sweden's main failure has never been to aim for a more open society with less restrictions on daily life. Other countries have managed that. Sweden's main failure is to have had people leading the strategy who either did not understand what was needed to do that or incapable of getting the necessary steps to keep society relatively open put in place.
Instead of admitting that the resources were not in place and could not come in place in time, thus changing track, the authorities adamantly stuck to a trajectory they could not control.

In Denmark at a press conference the question of why not do the huge track and trace operation of Korea and Taiwan, rather than the strict lock down. The answer was we do not have the resources and capacity for that right now. Sweden rather than admitting they, among others, needed a huge track and trace operation that they could not deliver faced the consequences of not being able to break the chains because testing was (and still is) abysmally low.

TheOneThatGotAway

I landed in Stockholm last week and I can say the same. Not many people wear masks on the buses and trains here. Same in shops.

Boraxo

Scary. It's interesting how they remain closed to tourists outside Schengen (even those who are vaccinated/tested) but clearly don't worry about infecting themselves. Even post-vaccination I don't plan to dine indoors or give up my mask. The virus is still out there killing people and mutating. Guess I will cross Sweden off the "where to spend winter / summer list.

GUWonder

Comparing Sweden's Covid-19 deaths situation with all of its bordering neighbors and noting that its Covid-19 deaths per capita and disability outcomes are far worse than for all its neighbors is the exact opposite of cherry-picking. And noting that Sweden is in the worst quartile globally is also less about cherry-picking than trying to bury Sweden's performance within the very mixed basket of EU countries as a whole.

The talk about "excess mortality lower than reported covid deaths" doesn't say much of anything about the level of effectiveness of the official pandemic response measures against Covid-19. It's an approach engineered from the back-end to try to bury Sweden's poor performance against Covid-19 during the pandemic despite Sweden's advantages coming into the pandemic.

Social "benefits" outcome of the Tegnell's strategy are questionable, not undeniable. Sweden's employment picture has gotten so much worse during this pandemic, and demographic divides have become more extreme and hardened during this pandemic because of the "let it rip" strategy.

If people accept that Tegnell's strategy worked the way he meant it to work, then Tegnell is a monster sociopath. Did the major Swedish media outlets ever try to look into Tegnell's background on things he said or wrote during his younger days when it came to the Swedish eugenics movement or its various elements?

Reminds me of Sweden's behavior during WW2, including with its Potemkin village "strategy".

the810

Sweden is average when it comes to covid performance, but the quality of life during the pandemic far exceeds the rest of Europe. For 95% of people it's much better to be in Sweden than anywhere else.

As I said before, it's a matter of priorities. If someone thinks preventing covid deaths is above everything else (and I respect that point of view), then yes, Sweden is mediocre. But if we look at the bigger picture, that mediocrity in covid rates is compensated by excellent performance in other parameters.

If the price for an open society would be a health disaster, if it were among the worst in the world, I would agree that Sweden has failed (as Brazil did, for example). But no such thing happened. Sweden has managed to protect its society without having a terrible impact on covid infection rates. 6500 excess deaths for a 10 million country is a result most European countries can only dream about (by the way, when we compare excess deaths rather than official covid deaths, Sweden will be doing even better, placing well below average).

The big questions I'd like to have answered are:

• What is Sweden doing differently than the rest of the world, that it manages to keep covid rates relatively low despite society being open, while other countries don't seem to be able to afford it?
• Why is Sweden's excess mortality so low compared to reported covid rates? It is just a matter of better testing/reporting or is there more to it?

Sweden is doing something differently. They are either doing something the rest of the world doesn't, or they aren't doing something everyone else does which actually worsens the situation. Whether you like the Swedish strategy or not, the ratio between how open Sweden is vs. how many deaths they have is unique.

the810

Sweden is only closed to non-EU tourists* because it has been agreed on EU level. Before that, their border was open to everyone.

Given how good is Sweden performing (6500 excess deaths, or 65 per 100k population in 2020) I really don't think the issue is they "don't worry about infecting themselves". They simply don't believe that masks or not dining indoors are the way to prevent that.

If you feel uncomfortable with that, feel free to stay away, but so far it's working well.

(* Non-Schengen EU tourists are allowed to enter.)

And people in Stockholm actually wear masks far more than elsewhere in Sweden. I've spent few days in Scania recently and masks were a rare sight, unlike in Stockholm where it's normal to have at least one or two people on a bus wearing a mask (in Sthlm some people even wear them in shops, which is unheard of elsewhere).