As the coronavirus swept through the world and killed over 1 million people, restaurants, bowling alleys, schools and movie theaters in Sweden remained open. This lackadaisical approach to COVID-19 was widely debated; other countries have watched them in curiosity, fear and confusion.
During the heart of COVID-19 in April, many Americans grew jealous of public spaces remaining open in Sweden. The European country took a lighthearted approach to avoid destruction to the economy. It was not centered around maintaining the basic public health of their population. Scientists have not supported how Sweden is handling the pandemic. U.S. government officials have, and it says a lot. Political officials should be listening and learning from scientists who are closely studying the virus in all of its capacity.
President Donald Trump nodded to Sweden’s approach when Americans questioned his extremely delayed reaction to shutting down states and lack of response to the uncertainty festering in the country.
In April, Trump criticized Sweden’s response to the pandemic saying “if [the U.S.] followed that approach, I think we might have two million people dead.” But, Trump was quick to reopen restaurants, malls and businesses in May, and continuously downplayed the virus throughout the summer.
The two countries are incomparable. Why? Sweden consists of 10 million people, while the U.S. is home to 331 million. It is difficult to compare the strategies of two different countries with extremely different population sizes, healthcare systems and more. Since American citizens are living close together they are more likely to catch the virus, and therefore the U.S. cannot react in the same fashion that Sweden did. The only similarity between the two countries is their ability to make inconsistent plans, strategies and messaging to handle the pandemic.
The pandemic has somewhat calmed down in Sweden, as the country’s infection rate has declined and the world can now assess if their strategy worked. As of today, Sweden has a total of 92,863 cases with 5,893 deaths. Sweden has the highest death rates in Scandinavia. For a small country, those numbers are significant.
Sweden has relied on the pure goodwill of its citizens to practice social distancing and personal hygiene, as they do not like to mix politics and public health. Sweden also has a well-funded public health system and a predominantly homogenous and healthy population. The U.S. does not.
The majority of Sweden’s health officials were unable to voice their opinion on certain government behaviors, such as keeping businesses wide open. Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell admitted “that some of the responses were flawed.” These “flawed” responses resulted in thousands of avoidable deaths.
As much as Trump wants this to be the case in the U.S., this is simply not how this pandemic works. With America’s large, dense and diverse population, it would be nearly impossible to avoid a dramatic increase in deaths if social distancing requirements and mask mandates were not in effect.
Our public health system is intertwined with politics, as many other systems are. The way Trump and Sweden’s officials mishandle this pandemic directly affects every citizen in the world. Although Sweden and the U.S. have been handling the pandemic differently, both approaches have left the virus uncontained and killing thousands of citizens. Both Sweden and Trump’s perspectives on the pandemic are purely for economic gains.
Sweden’s controversial approach to the pandemic provides an interesting insight into how the coronavirus is spreading around the world and the disputes between political and public health officials.
