Sweden has been a controversial country over the course of the COVID pandemic. Anti-restrictionists have often pointed to its lighter-touch governmental approach as the right course of action, while pro-restrictionists have decried the Scandinavian country's government for running what they call a dangerous and irresponsible experiment -- one that, at least at first, led to elevated death rates compared to neighboring countries. But in the longer run, was the Swedish model a success or a failure? First, let's stipulate that Sweden hardly adopted the 'anything goes' attitude that many have ascribed to it. Its people were voluntarily very cautious, and its government is currently recommending fourth vaccine shots for elderly residents. There was no free-for-all under which Swedes lived as if COVID didn't exist. But mandates were used only sparingly and briefly, certainly compared to many other places around the world. In a new piece in the UK Telegraph, Fraser Nelson argues that Sweden out-performed the United Kingdom across nearly all key metrics. He asks, provocatively, "was Sweden right about COVID all along?"
...During the lockdowns, Sweden became the world’s defiant outlier. Swedes saw it the other way around. They were keeping calm and carrying on: lockdown was an extreme, draconian, untested experiment. Lock up everyone, keep children out of school, suspend civil liberties, send police after people walking their dogs – and call this “caution”? Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, never spoke about a Swedish “experiment”. He said all along he could not recommend a public health intervention that had never been proven...Tegnell also made another point: that he didn’t claim to be right. It would take years, he’d argue, to see who had jumped the right way. His calculation was that, on a whole-society basis, the collateral damage of lockdowns would outweigh what good they do. But you’d only know if this was so after a few years. You’d have to look at cancer diagnosis, hospital waiting lists, educational damage and, yes, count the Covid dead. Almost two years on, we can look at the early indications.
