New Delhi: Long held as the ideal model for fighting coronavirus, the rising death toll in Sweden is testament to the fact that even countries that rely on science and have the best public health systems can suffer if they get arrogant with the virus, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta said in episode 488 of ‘Cut The Clutter’.
With about 4,562 deaths and over 41,800 people infected, Sweden has turned into one of the worst-faring developed countries.
Gupta said that Sweden approached the virus with a sense of arrogance thinking that they know best and now, the country is paying for it.
“A dictator can be arrogant with the virus, a democrat can be arrogant with the virus and a modern rich, socialist system — relying on science — can also be arrogant with the virus. But with this virus, you need humility,” said Gupta.
The Sweden model
For quite some time, Sweden has been held out as a ‘model’ of a number of things.
The country is held as a model of great socialism. It also sets an example as a country with the finest public health system in the world.
Lately, Sweden has been considered the model for dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
“Sweden followed a method that was different from the rest of the world, and particularly different from the rest of Europe,” Gupta said.
The country, which has a high per capita income of $58,000, has a very low population density of about 25 people per square kilometre.
Sweden decided early on, when countries were debating over how to deal with it, that they will not go for a countrywide lockdown.
Instead, they put in place voluntary social distancing and bans on non-essential travel. Social gatherings were restricted to under 50 people, and people were advised not to visit old age care homes.
How other countries dealt with the virus
“India decided on a draconian full lockdown for three weeks. Three more weeks after that, it is slowly opening up. Now we’re opening up a little bit more so six weeks of complete draconian lockdown,” Gupta said.
On the other hand, some countries decided to have a partial lockdown, for example Pakistan.
Countries like the US and the UK, initially thought that there was no need for lockdown, but soon enough they realised it was not working.
With the trend of infectivity in UK, it was thought that the country would have been better off staying with the initial idea proposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors of going for herd immunity.
They wanted to achieve this herd immunity by asking old people to stay at home while letting young people go out and get infected.
“A few will die but in the process, a large enough percentage will get immune and thereby they will give the entire population herd immunity,” said Gupta.
“Britain initially started on this plan, but when infections went up and the death toll started rising, they lost their nerve and went back to the idea for lockdown,” he added.
Brazil was held as the worst example, where President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed the disease as a ‘little flu’.
On the other hand, South Korea was a country that was held out as a model for the whole world. It tested a large number of people and was able to block the virus very fast.
The country employed one person to track every contact. Any contact that disappeared from sight or was not traceable for even a few hours was fined $10,000.
The other model that was seen to have worked was New Zealand. In fact, the success of the country started a whole clamour about Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, with people taking to social media hailing her as the one who should be the leader of the world, said Gupta.
What did Sweden do?
Sweden followed the advice of its state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell who said that there is no need for a nationwide lockdown.
The country trusted its citizens to follow social distancing guidelines and put some restrictions on social gatherings, intercity travel, and visits to care homes for older people.
“It did look like for some time that they were doing all right,” Gupta said.
Compared to the UK, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy — all of its neighbouring countries that had imposed a lockdown — Sweden seemed to be doing much better.
“Now, I’d say that the Swedish model is unraveling. And there’s a reason why I talk about Sweden and why it’s relevant for us,” he said.
Sweden went with the advice from its well-reputed chief epidemiologist and bent against the flow. They went in the direction opposite of all developed country peers.
“Today Sweden has had 4,542 deaths in a population of one crore. In fact, if you just extrapolate this to India’s population, for example, it would be equal 5,56,000 deaths,” Gupta said.
This is despite the fact that Sweden is 30 times richer than India and with a much lower population density. It has the world’s best public health care system, the finest doctors and the most aware population.
All these mathematical models of epidemiological studies on viral spread were based on viruses that we had known earlier, this is a new kind of virus. And perhaps these mathematical models don’t apply to this virus.
What happened in countries that followed lockdown?
The death toll in Denmark, Finland and Norway is 580, 321, and 237 respectively. Each country has a population of about 50 lakh — about half the population of Sweden.
If the European countries are compared based on deaths per million, Belgium is the highest with 833. UK is the second highest at 597. Spain is the third worst at 580. Italy comes fourth with 556 and the fifth worst is Sweden with 446 per million and still rising.
“Other countries have had their lockdowns, they are opening up. They’ve suffered the economic damage in those lockdowns, but they are now opening up and their economies are opening up and their fatality rates are not dropping quite steeply,” said Gupta.
In Sweden, on the other hand, the lockdown is still not there. They decided to go the herd immunity way. Their fatality rates per million are catching up with the worst in the world and the deaths are not declining.
They’ve already suffered economic damage. Sweden’s finance minister Magdalena Anderson has now said that its GDP decline this year will be about 7 per cent. According to her, this will be the worst year of Sweden’s economy since World War II.
“The world’s most likely country to succeed with herd immunity has shown you that herd immunity has been a disaster for it,” he added.
Science and arrogance
Tegnell, himself, recently admitted that the model has gone wrong. Earlier, in April, he had told the BBC that the high death toll was because old age homes were not able to stop the virus from coming in there but this does not disqualify their strategy.
“So once you get wedded to an idea, it’s very difficult to break off. And that’s when you continue to compound your errors,” Gupta said.
Tegnell later told Swedish media that if they were to encounter the same disease again, knowing exactly what we know about it today, they would settle on something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.
Norway’s public health chief Frode Forland also said that Sweden got caught up too much into historical models of viruses.
Tegnell’s predecessor Anika Lindy, said that Sweden’s response was all wrong.
According to her, Sweden should have announced an early lockdown and care homes should have been sealed. They should also have been more intensive in testing and tracing.
“Sometimes you can become a prisoner to dogma or ideology. Dogma in science is also bad. Politicians who don’t listen to scientists go wrong, but politicians who only listen to scientists also go wrong, because science is not absolute,” said Gupta.
“There are different points of view in science so leaders have to listen to everybody and then arrive at a thoughtful decision,” he added.