Sweden's coronavirus strategy is clearly different to other countries so who should people trust?

[Celerity]

When Sweden's path for handling the coronavirus pandemic is clearly deviating from other countries, who do international residents place their trust in, asks The Local Sweden's editor Emma Löfgren.

https://www.thelocal.se/20200327/sweden-the-coronavirus-is-unknown-territory-for-most-of-us-no-matter-where-were-from



Last week, I wrote that Sweden was becoming an outlier in how it is dealing with the new coronavirus. Now it seems the rest of the world has noticed. I think I have to go back to the refugee crisis of 2015 to find as many international hot takes about Sweden as this week. Is Sweden not implementing stricter restrictions on its people because they are horribly naive and complacent? Is it because decisions are generally made by expert authorities, rather than political ministers? Is it because they place a high premium on individual responsibility and trust? Are tougher rules not needed because people follow them anyway? Or are people still going out to restaurants, ski trips to the mountains, and hanging out with friends as usual, not a care in the world?

The honest answer is that there's a grain of truth in almost everything. It's also the slightly more boring answer, because it makes it harder to talk about Sweden as this peculiar country in the north where everything is either perfect paradise or a collapsing hellhole. There are now stricter rules in place for bars and restaurants, and public gatherings of more than 50 people have been banned. But not much else has changed, while the entire world has changed in other places.

Compare the Swedish guidelines to what the Danes were told by their government on Monday: "Cancel Easter lunch. Postpone family visits. Don't go sightseeing around the country." The Swedish Public Health Agency's corresponding recommendation is: "Ahead of the breaks and Easter, it is important to consider whether planned travel in Sweden is necessary to carry out." Even the official recommendations leave a lot of room for interpretation. Should you think of them as typically bureaucratic Swedish understatements and assume that you are in fact expected to fall in line and make sensible decisions, or should you think that as long as there are no rules it's a free-for-all?

"We can't legislate and ban everything. It's also a question of common-sense manners," said Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, telling people off for not following recommendations. The translation of the last bit is not perfect. He used the word folkvett, the moral sense that every person is expected to have without being taught, and a word every Swede will instinctively recognise as being very, very bad if you do not have it. Still, it tends to be one of those emotional conjugations: I have common sense, you are careless, those people over there are pig-headed fools who go partying during a pandemic. When the recommendations are open to interpretation, how do you know when you or someone else have crossed an invisible line?

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more at the link

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. There seems to be some snarking between Tegnell

and Berit Andersen, the chief epidemiologist in Norway, who says she thinks it's odd that, despite the known fact that quarantine and isolation reduce the spread of infection, Sweden is not using these practices. Tegnell has shrugged off this criticism, saying that Andersen hardly has more data than anyone else and that "most people who are serious in this field" will think it is too early to make such statements. https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/8mAVmw/sveriges-statsepidemiolog-tar-norsk-kritikk-med-ro

Why can't or won't they fire that guy?

[Celerity]

4. I DETEST Anders Tegnell as I have been documenting in multiple posts, he needs to be held criminally

liable after this all shakes out.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Why does he still have a job? Is he just parroting the official government line,

or is the government relying on his opinion?

[Celerity]

8. the government is paralysed (as usual) with fear and deferring to the so-called experts

here are a 2 OP's of mine that goes into depth (some of my replies do as well)

it is a clusterfuck, like reverso-word Trump (from the quasi-left, not the right)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213175937

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213167850

[blitzen]

2. Maybe they have the hospital/health system capacity to handle a fast surge? n/t

[Celerity]

5. no we do not, no one does in the EU

[mitch96]

3. " snarking between Tegnell and Berit Andersen"

The Swedes and Norwegians are always at odds with each other. I had a class with a Norwegian fellow and he could not say anything nice about a Swede. Goes back years, something about a war........ as usual..
m

[Celerity]

7. There was a personal union of the separate kingdoms of Sweden and Norway under a common monarch

and common foreign policy that lasted from 1814 until its peaceful dissolution in 1905.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_between_Sweden_and_Norway

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. But there was a war in 1814.

Norwegians haven't forgotten.

[Celerity]

10. Have not forgotten what? What are you trying to infer? All of Scandinavia was at war on and off

with each other for millennia up until until 1814. That said, there is not some simmering hatred from those countless conflicts, it is ancient history here. Norway does not go around intergenerationally fomenting anti-Swedish, anti-Danish zeitgeist, unlike parts of the southern US do against the 'yankees/Union and the ridiculous framing of the Civil War as 'The War of Northern Aggression'.

Ander Tegnell has sniped at so many of the other EU nations as well, especially Denmark. He is not singling out Norway over the Swedish–Norwegian War of 1814.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. Of course not, I was just kidding. My actual impression is that

at this point it's just more of a friendly rivalry. It helps that the languages are mostly mutually intelligible (except that nobody can understand spoken Danish), and with respect to relations with other countries they seem to function as something of a bloc. Anders Tegnell seems to be getting some backs up, though.

[Celerity]

12. ok, and I truly apologise for coming in all hot 'n argy bargy

a wee bit stressed here, there, everywhere

also, yes, friendly rivalry is a good way to put it

cheers!

Cel <3