I understand you’re probably feeling under fire here, and I’m sorry to have contributed to that.
As I’ve made clear, I think Sweden could have avoided a hard lockdown, and still could. But this would require better management from the government, and crucially better cooperation from the citizens. As I’ve also made clear, I don’t think the lack of a lockdown is the full explanation for Sweden’s higher number of deaths; I cited lack of PPE and the public’s ignorance about how to behave in a pandemic as significant contributing factors.
But when I look at what Sweden is doing, I feel there’s a significant disconnect between what is being done and what a government should be doing. Specifically, your government made the deliberately choice to deprioritize saving lives. To me that’s a shocking decision under any circumstances, but in this particular case it’s baffling. This was the initial response of the UK, and while that disgusted me it didn’t surprise me given who is in charge over there right now. But it’s not what I expected from Sweden, which has a reputation as being an enlightened social democracy, and one of the most enthusiastic and ethical upholders of human rights in the entire world.
Your government made the decision that instead of taking steps to protect its citizens, it would be better to gradually infect most of the population over a lengthy period, knowing that a significant proportion would die, in order to reach herd immunity through sheer attrition. I am sure that when they made that decision they’d been informed that the death toll would be sufficiently small to justify the policy (whatever “sufficiently small” meant to them), but I doubt that they thought it would go this high.
Looking at this graph, I have to ask “What are they aiming for here? Is this all going according to plan?”. This is containment through a firebreak of dead bodies. I don’t understand why they chose this path despite the fact that there were far safer options. I don’t understand why they didn’t prioritize the safety of their citizens.
Right now there are schoolchildren in Taiwan writing essays on the world’s response to the coronavirus. A repeated theme coming up is “Why are Western nations doing so badly?”, with associated questions like “Why don’t they understand about masks?”, “Why weren’t they prepared?”, “Why don’t they practice proper social distancing?”, “Why did they have to go into lockdowns, when our schools and bussinesses are still open?”, and “Why are their governments not protecting them?”. Schoolchildren know that Taiwan is donating masks to the US, UK, and Europe, because your governments couldn’t supply their own people with them.
Meanwhile the SCMP is taking the opportunity for a pretty sharp stab at Western societies in general, revealing the ever-present undercurrent of East-West rivalry which is still alive and well in the Far East.
Governments across Europe and North America have showed an almost callous disregard for the health of their citizens, and the world
In Asia, meanwhile, oases of single-minded purpose have sprung up, sincere in their efforts to ‘flatten the curve’ of transmission
There’s a general sentiment in the Far East that Western societies don’t care about their elderly (which is why they send them to nursing homes), and believe the individual is more important than the community, so they don’t feel it’s necessary to follow laws or cooperate with others for the good of society, especially if it inconveniences them.
This is a gross caricature, and the SCMP is taking a particularly low road here, especially given the fact that Singapore itself messed up its own response and its infection rate has yet to peak. But it’s revealing of a certain dominant trend of thought here in the Far East (don’t get me started on how they also think Westerners are morally degenerate and sexually promiscuous).
I realise that since your government doesn’t even recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation, it might be difficult for you to acknowledge Taiwan and its success, but I’ll leave you with these articles for your consideration.
- How Taiwan minimized the spread of corona (Swedish perspective, from https://kvartal.se).
Sweden and Taiwan both maintain that their efforts to control the corona virus are informed by experts in the field – still, they seem to have chosen different methods and their analysis varies greatly. Some hard-won experience from the Sars epidemic has contributed to Taiwan’s reputation as being a model for the rest of the world. Stringent and early controls at the border have been a deciding factor.
- Taiwan donates medical masks to Sweden (from the Taipei Mission in Sweden; unfortunately the Swedish government doesn’t permit Taipei to have a proper embassy).
Taiwan donates medical masks to Sweden. On behalf of Taiwan, Ambassador Daniel. T. C. Liao complimented Sweden for being a role model in giving and sharing to the world and said that it is the least that Taiwan can do to share our love and care with our friends in Sweden.
- State epidemiologist: Corona virus does not pose a threat in Sweden (this article is from January, and it has not aged well).
The Corona virus outbreak has led to Swedish companies imposing travel restrictions and to a run on protective face masks, but Sweden’s state epidemiologist says there is little reason to worry about getting infected in Sweden.
“Right now, I think the most important thing for Swedes to know about the disease is that it doesn’t exist here and there’s no reason for the Swedish population to be worried about it,” Anders Tegnell, state epidemiologist and co-director of the Public Health Agency of Sweden, tells Radio Sweden.
