Sweden's special Corona path and the dramatic consequences: researchers accuse the government of failure

Created: 04/06/2022, 17:55

By: Anna Lehmer

Sweden has taken a special path in the corona pandemic.

Researchers call the "laissez-faire approach" questionable in many ways and blame it for the deaths of many people.

Sweden - Too little, too late: Sweden's corona measures have been and are being hotly debated by experts around the world.

On the one hand, the special path taken by the Scandinavian country was seen as successful, since the implementation of measures was voluntary.

On the other hand, and the scientists around epidemiologist Nele Brusselaersin also agree, Sweden would have failed in every respect.

Corona virus in Sweden: Sonderweg is criticized worldwide

Sweden had chosen a special path in the Corona crisis.

Although certain restrictions were introduced in the EU country, these were very permissive compared to Germany and most other European countries.

Those responsible did not want to know anything about a lockdown, and shutdown remained a foreign word to them.

A Corona Commission set up to analyze Sweden's special path has harshly criticized it.

Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach also describes the Swedish Covid strategy as “very negative”, referring to the results of the analysis by Swedish scientists.

The lead author of the study is epidemiologist Nele Brusselaers, who along with seven other experts attempted to assess Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific knowledge and integrity.

Swedish scientists publish report with damning verdict

The research was published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

The study is guided by the question of how Sweden could have failed so badly.

Because “Sweden was also well equipped to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from breaking out seriously,” write the study authors.

The population is educated and has a high level of trust in the government.

Politicians have been working together with science for hundreds of years, which has made Sweden's preventive medicine successful worldwide.

And despite all that, in 2020 Sweden had a "10 times higher COVID-19 death rate than neighboring Norway," according to the publication.

The Swedish government has failed: researchers accuse them of omissions

The scientists have found a culprit in the government.

Those responsible ignored scientific recommendations and warnings.

Arbitrary political decisions were made with the aim of continuing to portray Sweden as a liberal country.

Protecting the health of the population and saving human lives have received little political attention.

The health authorities are accused of classifying advice from Swedish and international scientists as extreme positions.

This would have led to the media and political bodies accepting their own policies.

The population was not informed that SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through the air,

Swedish Minister of Health: Strategy was not having a strategy

All of this happened under the calculation of the Swedish government to give society as much responsibility as possible.

While a strategy to protect vulnerable groups was developed when the world COVID-19 pandemic broke out, it was never implemented.

In their report, the scientists quote the Minister for Health and Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren.

When questioned by Parliament, she publicly stated that the government's strategy was not to have a strategy.

The right actions would be taken at the right time.

Corona pandemic in Sweden: no headwind for government

In fact, only one official crisis management plan has been developed throughout the pandemic, which is available to the study's scientists.

The key points for summer 2020 were therefore not to spread fear and panic, prevent social unrest and limit the impact on industry/economy/hospitality.

However, this plan would not have included any information on healthcare, healthcare capacity or infection control measures.

The report goes on to say that the government's strategy never faced any headwinds.

In the first year and a half of the pandemic, there was only one slight criticism from the opposition.

Other parties simply did not question Sweden's special path.

According to the report, some would only have wondered why in May 2020 the mortality rate was in the top 10 in all of Europe and the country's economy collapsed.

Swedish doctors before the triage: the government is said to have given certain instructions

The failures of the government led, among other things, to critical and sometimes tragic situations in Swedish hospitals.

The study authors suspect that doctors in several cities faced the triage.

In addition, in the spring of 2020, many sick people were not hospitalized and did not even receive a health check because they were classified as not at risk.

This has resulted in people dying at home despite trying to seek help.

In addition, the scientists accuse the government of having issued triage instructions in the Stockholm region that indicated that people with several previous illnesses, a higher body mass index or a certain age (80+) were not admitted to the intensive care unit should be admitted.

The reason:

Covid-19 no longer “generally dangerous” in Sweden

The study finds devastating words for government officials and those responsible for the pandemic in Sweden.

The country is wealthy and highly developed, and in recent decades it has increasingly invested in healthcare and research.

It is all the more astonishing for the scientists that these (human) resources were hardly used during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government behaved passively, scientific advisors had denied the corona pandemic for too long.

The health agency would have erroneously relied on older data on pandemic influenza and herd immunity.

However, the report only assesses the errors in the first year of the pandemic and thus those of the past.

During this time, however, the special path was "through a moral,

The future looks similar, because Sweden has officially denied Corona's dangerous properties.

From now on, COVID-19 is no longer a “generally dangerous or socially dangerous” disease.

(ale)