https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-a-holdout-from-covid-19-restrictions-sweden-ends-its-pandemic-experiment-11607261658?mod=mhp
Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over.
After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures.
Like other Europeans, Swedes are now heading into the winter facing restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to curbs on alcohol sales and school closures—all aimed at preventing the country’s health system from being swamped by patients and capping what is already among the highest per capita death tolls in the world.
The clampdown, which started last month, put an end to a hands-off approach that had made the Scandinavian nation a prime example in the often heated global debate between opponents and champions of pandemic lockdowns.
Admirers of the Swedish way as far as the U.S. hailed its benefit to the economy and its respect for fundamental freedoms. Critics called it a gamble with human lives, especially those of the most vulnerable. With its shift in strategy, the government is now siding with those advocating at least some mandatory restrictions.
When the pathogen swept across Europe in March, Sweden broke with much of the continent and opted not to impose mask-wearing and left known avenues of viral transmission such as bars and nightclubs open, leaving it to citizens to take their own precautions.
As late as last month, Swedes enjoyed mass sporting and cultural events and health-care officials insisted that the voluntary measures were enough to spare the country the resurgence in infections that was sweeping Europe.
Weeks later, with total Covid-19-related deaths reaching almost 700 per million inhabitants, infections growing exponentially and hospital wards filling up, the government made a U-turn.
In an emotional televised address on Nov. 22, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pleaded with Swedes to cancel all nonessential meetings and announced a ban on gatherings of more than eight people, which triggered the closure of cinemas and other entertainment venues. Starting Monday, high schools will be closed.
“Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave,” said Piotr Nowak, a physician working with Covid-19 patients at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. “We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.”
Last week Sweden’s total coronavirus death count crossed 7,000. Neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway, all similar-sized countries, have recorded since the start of the pandemic 878, 415 and 354 deaths respectively. For the first time since World War II, Sweden’s neighbors have closed their borders with the country.
“We don’t like to say that Sweden has been the black sheep, but it has been the different sheep,” said Vivikka Richt, spokeswoman of the Finnish health ministry.
Dr. Nowak said medical personnel had never shared the optimism of the country’s public-health agency about so-called herd immunity—population-wide resistance to a pathogen acquired through gradual exposure—and had repeatedly warned that the virus couldn’t be controlled with voluntary measures alone.
One reason Sweden stuck to its approach for so long despite the warning signs is the high degree of independence and authority enjoyed by the health agency and other similar state bodies under Swedish law.
The public face of the country’s pandemic strategy was Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist.
Dr. Tegnell declined to be interviewed this week, but in earlier conversations with The Wall Street Journal and other media he said lockdowns were unsustainable and unnecessary. His agency has continued to discourage mask-wearing just as the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, a European Union agency whose headquarters are located near Dr. Tegnell’s office in Stockholm, recommends wearing them.
In recent months, Dr. Tegnell predicted that Swedes would gradually build immunity to the virus through controlled exposure, that vaccines would take longer than expected to develop, and that death rates across the West would converge.
Instead, the West’s first coronavirus vaccine was authorized in Britain last week, Sweden’s death rate remains an outlier among its neighbors, and Dr. Tegnell acknowledged in late November that the new surge in infections showed there was “no sign” of herd immunity in the country.
Economic Downturn
Sweden’s gross domestic product and unemployment rate have reached the worst levels in a decade.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s laissez-faire pandemic strategy has failed to deliver the economic benefits its proponents had predicted. In the first half of the year, Sweden’s gross domestic product fell by 8.5% and unemployment is projected to rise to nearly 10% in the beginning of 2021, according to the central bank and several economic institutes.
Businesses such as restaurants, hotels and retail outfits are facing a wave of closures; unlike in the rest of Europe, where governments coupled restrictions with generous stimulus, Swedish authorities have offered comparatively less support to businesses since they didn’t impose closures.
“This is worse than a lockdown and it has been a catastrophic year for everyone in the business: they haven’t closed us so they don’t give us any substantial support, yet they say to people ‘don’t go to restaurants’,” said Jonas Hamlund, who was forced to close one of his two restaurants in the coastal city of Sundsvall, laying off 30 people.
Fear of the virus and the government’s advice to avoid social interactions have weighed on domestic demand, damaging business and investor confidence, said Lars Calmfors, an economist and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“Countries that had mandatory restrictions have done better than us,” he added.
In Stockholm, Anna Lallerstedt runs a chain of three popular restaurants that was started by her parents in the 1980s. Last month she closed two of them, shedding nearly 100 jobs. She says she fears that her last restaurant, now employing just over 10 people, might also be at risk with the current surge expected to peak around the Christmas season, which traditionally brings substantial revenues.
“Maybe we should have had masks earlier,” Ms. Lallerstedt said.
Mr. Löfven’s intervention amounted to a demotion for Dr. Tegnell, who has de facto ceded control of the government’s pandemic effort. But some scientists said the failed experiment had shaken confidence in authorities and experts in a country with a long tradition of respecting both.
An Ipsos poll found in November that 82% of responses are worried about the pandemic burden on hospitals, while 44% said authorities didn’t take sufficient measures, up from 31% in October. Dr. Tegnell remains popular, however, with a majority still supporting him.
“The spread of the disease is increasing in Stockholm and we have a very, very serious situation right now,” said Björn Eriksson, Health and Hospitals Director for the Stockholm region, the country’s most populous area.
Mr. Eriksson said that the capital’s health-care professions were struggling with the patient load and that the pandemic was putting a strain on the system that could only be eased by more restrictive measures.
“We like to think of ourselves as being very rational and pragmatic,” Mr. Calmfors, the economist, said. Yet for months, he added, authorities persisted in their approach despite mounting evidence that it was failing. “I can’t recognize my country anymore.”
