Sweden’s insistence on remaining open in the face of the coronavirus “does not seem to have hurt them,” the New York Times (4/28/20) was reporting in late April.
The New York Times reporter who offered “Sweden’s apparent success in handling the scourge without an economically devastating lockdown” (4/28/20) as a model for other nations grappling with the coronavirus is now writing about how Swedes are no longer allowed to visit other Scandinavian countries—and explaining it in a way that minimizes having to acknowledge how much he sold deadly snake oil to New York Times readers.
Back in late April, Times reporter Thomas Erdbrink was reporting (with younger Swedes throng[ing] bars, restaurants and a crowded park last week, drinking in the sun”:
They laughed and basked in freedoms considered normal in most parts of the world not long ago, before coronavirus lockdowns, quarantines and mass restrictions upended social norms. As other nations in Europe begin to consider reopening their economies, Sweden’s experience would seem to argue for less caution, not more.
The New York Times now acknowledges Sweden’s “differing outcomes.”
Jump forward two months, and those neighbors have gotten their Covid-19 outbreaks under control, while the pandemic still rages unabated in Sweden. The result is that Scandinavia’s traditionally porous borders have been closed; as Erdbrink writes, in “Sweden Tries Out a New Status: Pariah State”
This year, Swedes are forbidden to enter Norway.
And Norway isn’t the only Scandinavian neighbor barring Swedes from visiting this summer. Denmark and Finland have also closed their borders to Swedes, fearing that they would bring new coronavirus infections with them.
Explaining this decision, Erdbrink presents it as a retrospective issue:
While those countries went into strict lockdowns this spring, Sweden famously refused, and now has suffered roughly twice as many infections and five times as many deaths as the other three nations combined, according to figures compiled by the New York Times.
While reporting differences can make comparisons inexact, the overall trend is clear, as is Sweden’s new status as Scandinavia’s pariah state.
The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s disastrous coronavirus policy—described as “widely admired for his determinedly maverick approach”—is allowed to make a case that this is unfair discrimination:
Swedish officials, including the architect of the country’s measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Anders Tegnell, are not amused. They say Swedes have been stigmatized by an international campaign to prove Sweden was wrong…. Mr. Tegnell also said that infections in Sweden “had peaked,” and were now falling, a trend reflected in the Times’ figures.
Though Anders Tegnell denies Sweden is “striving for so-called herd immunity,” he’s still peddling the same junk science US media were taken in by earlier (FAIR.org, 5/27/20).
(Erdbrink continues to take seriously Tegnell’s “herd immunity” bullshit—see FAIR.org, 5/27/20—though it’s repackaged in different language. The doctor “warn[s] their neighbors that they are going to be much more vulnerable if a second wave of the virus hits in the fall,” he reports, quoting Tegnell boasting, “We are really confident that our immunity is higher than any other Nordic country’s.” Tegnell claims this “is contributing to lower numbers of patients needing hospitalization, as well as fewer deaths per day.” Actually, Sweden’s case fatality rate—deaths per recognized case of Covid—is 8.4%, far higher than Denmark’s 4.8%, Finland’s 4.6% or Norway’s 2.8%.)
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde is also allowed to argue that Sweden is being treated unfairly:
“It is sad and frustrating that regions on the borders were so easy to close,” said Ms. Linde. She pointed to southern Sweden, where coronavirus infections were much lower than in bordering Denmark. Nevertheless, she said, “suddenly there were border guards” on the bridge connecting the two countries.
“That will take time to heal, it was too harsh,” she added. “It is very difficult to understand. There were far more deaths in Copenhagen.”
The brief rebuttal to this Swedish self-pity is likewise framed in terms of cumulative deaths. “Experts in the other Scandinavian countries say…such talk misses a major point,” Erdbrink writes:
“When you see 5,000 deaths in Sweden and 230 in Norway, it is quite incredible,” said Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and the former director of the World Health Organization…. “It will take a lot to even out this difference a year or two into the future.”
But the argument for closing Scandinavia’s borders doesn’t rest on how many Swedes died in the past; rather, it’s the number who are currently getting infected with the coronavirus that is of great concern to its neighbors—and should be. As of June 22, Sweden was averaging 90.5 new cases a day per million residents; this was 12 times the rate of infection in Denmark, 32 times the rate in Norway and fully a hundred times as many people as were catching the virus in Finland:
It’s true that the rate of new cases “had peaked”—three days earlier, on June 19—and “were now falling,” to levels that were still far above those seen by other Scandinavian countries at the worst of their epidemics.
Is it jealousy of ABBA that has made Scandinavians close their borders to Swedes—or sky-high infection rates?
Given that Sweden is still in the midst of an uncontrolled outbreak, it’s no wonder that countries that have made great sacrifices to virtually halt the spread of the coronavirus within their borders are unwilling to allow Swedes to wander about their countries without restriction. Yet Erdbrink gives credence to the idea that the closures are related not to health concerns, but to “resentments and differences that usually are obscured by a Scandinavian sense of mutual identity and niceness.”
“Sweden is a sort of regional hegemon, and, its critics say, given to a certain arrogance and exceptionalism that can be grating,” he writes, suggesting that its neighbors are jealous of Sweden having “successful brands like Volvo, Ikea and H&M, as well as the band ABBA.” The story closes with Swedish journalist Asa Linderborg moaning: “We are supposed to sit here in our corner of shame, and the worst part is that you’re savoring it…. All Norwegians, all Danes and all Finns are loving that the Swedes aren’t welcome anywhere.”
A reporter’s effort to put the happiest face on coverage that hasn’t aged well wouldn’t matter so much if the New York Times hadn’t been one of the most prestigious news outlets pointing to Sweden as a model for a “what me—worry?” approach to the coronavirus. This reporting, ridiculous in real time, contributed to the premature reopening of states shut down to curb Covid-19—and thus is partially responsible for the fact that the US too faces a resurgence in infection rates, to the point where the European Union is talking about barring travel from the United States until we get our outbreak under control.
The New York Times story (6/23/20) on the EU’s prospective ban on US visitors is actually much better than its coverage of Scandinavia’s ostracism of Sweden—making it clear that it’s infection rates, not “resentments and differences,” that make Europeans wary of American travelers. Perhaps reporter Matina Stevis-Gridneff doesn’t have any embarrassing celebrations of a lackadaisical approach to the coronavirus that she needs to live down.
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I think you’re being a bit disingenuous about Sweden as just as with the UK, the majority of Sweden’s deaths occurred in care homes, which they didn’t protect.
In the UK, more than half of all our deaths also occurred in care homes where we did even worse; not only did we not protect the folks in care homes, we emptied hospitals of infected patients and sent them back to the care homes!
I read that Norwegian PM regrets shutting the country down and frankly we have completely ignored the ‘collateral damage’ from the forced imprisonment of the population. By the the time this is all over (if ever) and we count the cost of untreated heart disease, cancer, suicide etc, I’ll wager those ‘excess’ deaths will outnumber the deaths from the virus.
We built the so-called Nightingale temporary hospitals that have 13,000 beds and the number occupied? 60, and most of those were from existing hospitals. The govt knew they didn’t have staff run them.
I think this whole nightmare is about something else, namely the meltdown of the capitalist system that has latched on the ‘convenient’ virus and used very sophisticated psychological, behaviour techniques on the population to frighten the living out of us! We’re like sheep being led to the slaughter.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of soundbites and furious denials
Signifying nothing but wilful ignorance and arrogance
As a Norwegian, I have no comment on your details regarding the differences in the death rates between my country and Sweden. I just want to point out that Finland is not in Scandinavia. Scandinavia consists of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. I believe what you are referring to is something called the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries consists of the Scandinavian countries, Finland and Iceland.
As the polar caps melt, and as your president Trump does his best to destroy what little good is left in the world, I think this difference is important to point out.
The huge increase in Covid cases in Sweden a few weeks ago was when testing for the general public started to get going, way too late. It does not reflect any real increase. At the contrary, if you look at excess mortality it is more or less gone since late May. (Bit hard to say exactly given delays in reporting).
I think Naureckas, like a lot of other progressives has been taken in by a very, very sophisticated propaganda offensive against the world’s people. Yes, of course numbers rise once you actually start counting cases! Duh!
Here in the UK we have ‘MIndspace’, “Influencing behaviour through public policy”, a psyops project for the UK Cabinet Office which has its ‘Nudge Unit’. From the Executive Summary:
“Influencing behaviour is central to public policy. Recently, there have been major advances in understanding the influences on our behaviours, and government needs to take notice of them. This report aims to make that happen.”
Couldn’t be clearer could it.
http://williambowlesnet.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/mindspace.pdf
If you remember, back at the start of this capitalist nightmare we had Neil Ferguson’s 500,000 deaths figure for the UK, which frightened the living daylights out of all of us including your truly, thus softening us up for what was planned for us and ‘conveniently’ downgraded to 20,000 deaths but the psyops had done the trick, we were ready to accept whatever the Gangsters had prepared for us.
We’ve been played like the ill-informed suckers we are, thanks to a totally integrated corporate/state media. FEAR is the word! Second Wave? Third Wave? I’m appalled that so many right-thinking people have taken in by the Goebellian propaganda campaign.
What might not be very obvious to the U.S. reader is that all the Scandinavian countries are welfare states. This gives an advantage in the situation. There is general paid sick leave, free healthcare and unemployment benefits that weighs up for many of the societal ‘ills’ that the U.S. are now suffering. Our businesses are all starting up again, and there is free movement within the society. A few has had to file for bankruptcy – yes, but not by far as many as was predicted. Actually there has been a remarkable fall in other diseases and ills such as heart disease, suicides and domestic violence – contrary to all predictions. Yes, the Norwegian PM has said she has regretted closing down to the extent that was done in Norway. By what we know now it could have been handled differently, but hindsight is an impossible decision-maker and I would still argue that it was the correct decision at the time. Better safe than sorry. It is worth mentioning that the Swedes also made some major mistakes. If they had only started contact tracing, they would have been in quite a different state than they are now.
To the British I would say; You may be sheep, but your voices are heard at every election. You made a choice and your – or rather your leaders – slow reaction has given an predictable outcome.
This is just a rewriting of history. The lock downs were never intended to stop the number of deaths in any country, they were to spread out the expected hospitalization rates so the health care systems would not collapse. Full stop. Why people want to compare Sweden with Norway is beyond me. No one is comparing the US to Canada, which essentially responded similarly, or Italy to Greece. Such comparisons are pointless because there are too many factors at play that get ignored. In addition, we don’t yet have evidence that suggests lock downs are helpful. South Korea did not have a lock down, yet has had one of the greatest success rates so far. Narrowing everything down to one factor that we don’t even know has that much of an impact seems pointless. I expect better from FAIR on this.
Nice piece Jim, thanks for calling out the NY times for regurgitating the Swedish state propaganda on covid-19. You forgot to call out the WHO official who praised it as a model for the rest of the world. It is hard to understand how anyone would look at covid-19 approaches by the different Nordic countries and the outcomes and then conclude that the Swedish model, not the Norwegian or Finnish models, which resulted in far less casualties, is the model for the world.
There is some incorrect/imprecise reporting here FAIR. Denmark is actually allowing Swedes from regions where infections are low into the country.
Details here: https://um.dk/en/news/newsdisplaypage/?newsID=682B5B45-7FD2-4D2A-BDD8-22BC9ABCC62D
It seems to me that all experts agree that, while we know more than before, we can only guess at what kinds of future developments the C19 outbreak will bring. Given the lack of actual “cures” for C19, I also think that what we were trying to do with all these measures was to slow the spread enough that we didn’t run out of “hospital beds” for the sick while we search for a “cure/vaccine” – while trying to balance this against the other impacts to society.
Now if, e.g., a country experiences a (very likely) 2nd or 3rd infection wave at a later point, won’t the infection rate depend, among other things, on how much “immunity” is already in the population (i.e. if a higher percentage of people have developed immunity through exposure earlier, there would be relatively fewer new infections)? What, e.g., _if_ Sweden has indeed had a wider spread throughout their population so far (without overwhelming their hospital beds, I think?), but then gets fewer infections down the road (compared to their neighbor countries), resulting in fewer future deaths – might their total percentages not look vastly different than they do now? Can we then still say that their approach is a failure? And if so, don’t we need to wait until that cure comes about before we can truly “judge” which approach worked best?
I think it’s worth reporting on and continuing to watch and probe, but, to my mind, too early to judge.
Personally, I’m also still confused on why we’re reporting on infection rates at all, given the vastly different methods and availability of testing, sometimes from facility to facility, but certainly from country to country. At this point, i.e. when C19 infections rate numbers are so unreliable (e.g. based on who’s being tested, availability/quality of testing, comorbidity reporting), I only see the excess-death rate having any meaning on a larger scale (as opposed to, e.g., reporting percentages for a relatively-controlled small study/group) – and even that number doesn’t tell us that much, imo.
Maybe we (humans) need to learn to “live gracefully with uncertainty”, rather than rushing to conclusions?
Such a rational comment! I used to look to FAIR for rational insightful reporting but alas they seem as duped as the rest of the MSM on this topic.
Oh maybe it’s karma. Sweden. You didn’t do the right thing with Julian Assange either.
The NYT? Disingenuous? There’s no way they would ever spread disinformation just to gather more clicks, come on that’s just crazy conspiracy.
People are calling it far too early. Nothing is ‘under control’ yet in any country.
No citation for the ABBA photo?