Who am I and why this diary?

My name is Dylan, I was born in California to Brazilian-American parents. My family moved to Sweden when I was very young and I have lived here most of my life. In the face of a virtual tsunami of rumors, half-truths, misunderstandings and outright lies (spread by Russia and China for political reasons), I felt I wanted to try to explain what is actually going on in Sweden and the country’s approach to the current pandemic.

I am aware that this probably won’t do much of a difference at all, but I feel – for the sake of my own conscience if nothing else – that I need to at least try to set the record straight when it comes to Sweden’s battle with the corona virus pandemic. So, I thought I’d write a diary about it (my first diary here at Daily Kos, in fact). I also want to apologise for any typos in this text as these are really busy times for me both at work and privately and I haven’t had the time to go through this text as well as I would want before I published it. This is also the reason why I have not answered to comments as much as I would have liked the last couple of days (I hope I get around to that soon though and I mean no disrespect).

With that said, I’ll cut to the chase and start with some short background information needed to understand how we ended up in this situation.

The current Swedish government

Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven (Social Democrat)

Since the last election, in September 2018, Sweden has been governed by a politically weak and unpopular coalition consisting of the Social Democrats and the Green party, with Stefan Löfven (Social Democrat) as prime minster. This coalition does not have a majority in the parliament and is therefore dependent on at least passive support from three other parties: the left wing former communist party and the two center right (by Swedish standards – which is basically middle of the road democrats in the US) liberal parties.

Prime minister Löfven’s handling of the corona virus crisis has resulted in his approval ratings shooting up from 26 to 47% in just a couple of weeks. Needles to say, this would not have been true if people thought he had botched it in any way.

Stefan Löfven’s approval ratings were very low – sitting around 25% - in January, but the government’s handling of the pandemic crisis has been widely approved by the citizens of Sweden, including supporters of the main opposition party Moderaterna (right wing, by Swedish standards, thus basically center left or moderate Democrats by US standards). Löfven’s approval ratings have now shot up dramatically to about 50%. The only party that has somewhat criticized the government’s handling of the crisis has been the Trumpian, Russia friendly and anti-immigrant far right party called the Sweden Democrats. Their leader Jimmie Åkesson has gone from being 4% up on Stefan Löfven to to being 21% down in approval...

Hostility from China and Russia towards Sweden

The relations between Sweden and China has been quite strained during the last year or so, after China kidnapped Swedish-Chinese (dual citizenship) author Gui Minhai while he was on vacation in Thailand and subsequently jailed him and sentenced him to 10 years in prison for the “crime” of criticizing the Chinese government in a couple of books. Sweden has refused to accept this treatment of one of its citizens and is still persistently calling for Minhai’s release. This, in turn, has greatly vexed China, who as a result has been taking every chance to hit back at Sweden and trying to tarnish the country’s reputation by planting negative news about Sweden in international media.

This Chinese campaign coincides with the relentless barrage of Russian disinformation, directed at most Western democracies and since 2015 also heavily against Sweden. The Russian objective in its’ hostile disinformation campaign against Sweden particularly, is to cause general confusion and fear among Swedes, animosity against immigrants, as well as distrust in public authorities and in the Swedish democracy itself. The disinformation efforts by Russia and China have been spotted and reported on by the Swedish media on many occasions (like here and here) and the government has been trying hard to refute it and push back both domestically and internationally.

Sweden’s response to the corona virus threat

Since the new corona virus first started to spread in Sweden, the government and the health authorities have been very clear, that there is one main objective with everything they do: flatten the curve, so that as few people as possible in the country will suffer and/or die from covid 19. The government of Stefan Löfven has completely deferred to the country’s best medical and scientific expertise and promptly followed and implemented all the measures that the experts have called for – as for example banning all gatherings of more than 50 persons.

In other words, the government of Sweden is taking the corona virus extremely seriously and has the exact same objective as all other nations in the European Union: flatten the curve, so that as few people as possible in the country will suffer and/or die from covid 19.

Though the goal of the Swedish government is the same as that of almost all other nations and even though the Swedish government has taken some extraordinary action (like the above mentioned ban on gatherings of more than 50 people in one place), there are some clear differences with the approach taken by Sweden as opposed to most other countries. For example the Swedish government has not locked people in their homes or closed down restaurants. Instead Sweden has largely asked the country’s inhabitants to follow a number of far reaching precautions and restrictions voluntarily. This may sound strange for those who are not familiar with the culture and society of Sweden. However, it does make sense here, because the Swedes in general have an extremely high level of trust in the country’s government and authorities (especially the health authorities), because there is no history of these institutions either lying to the people or failing (in modern times). The result has also been quite the expected – people by and large have been following the recommendations of the government and authorities very closely.

It is also important to note that there have been stark warnings from the government and the authorities that if people do not follow the (so far) mostly voluntary restrictions and rules or that these would prove insufficient, the government will immediately impose mandatory restrictions, just like in many other countries.

Sweden is not going for herd immunity more than any other nation. The notion that Sweden is going for some sort of fast track to herd immunity is false information that has been spread by Russia and China. These fake news have been repeatedly and vehemently denied by both the Swedish government and the Swedish health authorities - none of which are in the habit of lying to the people of this country. When Trump blathered about Sweden going for “the herd, they call it the herd” the other day, the foreign minister of Sweden again pointed out that this is factually wrong.

The point of lock-downs and the meaning of flattening the curve

The objective of Sweden, just as almost all other countries on earth right now, is to flatten the curve as illustrated above. So far, Sweden has been more successful — not less — in this effort than most other nations. Obviously though, this is no guarantee of future success.

The point of the lock-downs we have seen around the world where people are banned from leaving their homes, cities are sealed off and most businesses are closed down entirely is to help flatten the curve. So, what does flattening the curve mean again? Well, it means adopting certain measures in order to spread the number of infections in a population out over a longer period of time than what would have been the case if these measures were not in place.

By flattening the curve, the same number of people will ultimately get infected, but the key is to avoid a scenario where so many people get infected at the same time that the hospitals and the society cannot cope, resulting in more suffering, more deaths and possibly a partial collapse of the entire society. In other words, all a lock-down does is to buy us time and enable the health care systems of each country to handle the situation without collapsing. Which — again — is exactly what Sweden is trying to achieve.

The result so far

Contrary to what Donald Trump and other disinformation spreaders are claiming, Sweden is not “suffering” from the corona virus more than most countries. Actually, the opposite is true. Sweden has (rather surprisingly) less hospital beds per 1000 people than most other European countries (including Spain and Italy) — yet the hospitals in the country have so far not been swamped by patients nor is the health care system anywhere near collapsing. The predictions of the Swedish health authorities are that the pandemic in this country will peak during the next two weeks and that the situation will stay under control. Hopefully this is correct.

Some have made comparisons between Sweden and its neighbors Norway and Denmark, correctly pointing out that there are almost twice as many confirmed cases in Sweden as in Norway or Denmark. However, these people fail to point out that the population of Sweden is also roughly twice that of both Norway and Denmark. So, one would expect more cases and more deaths in Sweden than in either of those two countries. Also, Norway and Denmark are now saying that they will gradually open up their harsh restrictions, from next week on, basically going in the direction of Sweden.

Norway, Denmark and some other countries that have been temporarily locked down to a higher extent than Sweden may have kicked the can down the road further that Sweden has and thus flattened the curve even more than here. But kicking the can down the road is not a solution in itself. As longs as the health care system isn’t overwhelmed and can cope with the stream of patients coming in – the goal is achieved. And that is so far the case in Sweden as well as Norway and Denmark. Hopefully things will stay this way in all three countries.

A Swedish field hospital that was possible to set up in time because of the successful efforts to flatten the curve. As of now, it is still empty of patients, but it is projected to be used during the coming weeks as the pandemic is thought to reach its peak in the Stockholm region.

Apart from the hospital beds in the regular hospitals in Sweden – that are not full – additional temporary health care sites have been put in place, most notably an entire field hospital prepared by the Swedish army in Älvsjö, south of Stockholm. So far this field hospital has not been used, because the regular hospitals have been able to cope with the situation.

This does not mean that the Swedish health care system and hospitals have been cruising through this whole situation and that there has been no stress and no problems. There certainly has. But what country is skating through this effortlessly?

Russian and Chinese disinformation

The Swedish government, doctors, health care experters and authorities generally have more credibility when it comes to Swedish health care than Vladimir Putin. And it’s not even close. Yet, it would seem that Vladimir Putin’s version of the public health situation in Sweden is getting more traction around the world at the moment.

The Chinese state media was quick to announce that Sweden had “given up” against the corona virus and was going to let the country’s population suffer and die with no help whatsoever. Now this piece of news wasn’t very subtle and, to my knowledge, didn’t gain much traction outside of China. But then last weekend (April 4th and 5th) there was a piece of “news” that was apparently widely spread around the globe, that the Swedish government was giving up on its’ do-nothing-and-let-the-virus-spread approach and counting from Monday (the 6th) would place the country in strict lock-down, just like Italy, because the “irresponsible” initial approach of “business as usual” had left the country in a state of calamity and that the Swedish society was teetering at the brink of complete collapse. Even respectable news outlets ran with this story on Sunday (April 5) in Brazil and I received messages from worried friends and family there asking me if I was ok and how I was coping with the apocalyptic situation and newly imposed curfew in Sweden. The reality was that none of this was true. Sweden, as I explained above in this diary, by no means at any point adopted a “business as usual” approach. And, again, Sweden was not (and still isn’t) anywhere near a collapse either when it comes to it’s hospitals and even less as a society. And thirdly, nothing – and I mean nothing at all – changed from Sunday to Monday last week in terms of new rules and restrictions imposed from the government.

All along the last couple of weeks there has been “news” about the government of Sweden aiming for “herd immunity” basically by doing almost nothing to prevent the virus from spreading and that this approach had led to disastrous results in terms of sickness, deaths and strain on the health care system of Sweden. This of course was picked up by a characteristically confused and barely articulate Donald Trump a few days ago in one of his daily MAGA live shows on TV.

It is frankly scary to see how effective this disinformation effort has been, using the current corona virus crisis in order to slander and tarnish Sweden’s reputation.

Where Sweden actually has failed

One place where Sweden has somewhat failed though, is when it comes to keeping the corona virus out of nursing homes (where most deaths have been registered so far). Here, Norway and Denmark have been more efficient, so far. This is rather ironic, as nursing homes are one of the few places where very tough and tight mandatory restrictions were introduced early on in Sweden, in order to stop the virus from spreading. Another failure is that Somali and Arab immigrant communities in Sweden have been hit disproportionally hard (with a death rate that is several hundred percent higher than the population in general). It is too early to say why this is, but one theory is that information about the pandemic were largely distributed in Swedish only — and many people in these immigrant communities do not speak Swedish very well.

Some final thoughts

I did not vote for the Löfvén government. In fact, I even campaigned for the main opposition party (Moderaterna) before the 2018 election. I am far from a fan of Stefan Löfven and his Social Democrats. But although we obviously have different opinions on many issues, he is a decent man and I have no doubt that he is doing everything he can in this situation to ensure the safety and health of all Swedes and everyone else living in Sweden. I have also been genuinely impressed by his steady and calm leadership during this time of crisis and his decision to follow the demands and recommendations of the scientific community in Sweden (which is almost unanimously in support of the Swedish government’s policies in handling the pandemic). Stefan Löfven is certainly not, as some disinformation campaigns would have us all believe, some kind of twisted doctor Mengele type doing deadly experiments on the Swedish people.

Finally, what we see now is a snapshot of how the pandemic has hit the world and different countries so far. No country will remain in lock-down indefinitely, but has to open up at some point. As mentioned, all a lock-down does is to buy us time and enable the health care systems of each country to handle the situation without collapsing. And again, the Swedish health care system and hospitals are (so far) handling the situation better than their equivalences in most countries. Some nations may have kicked the can down the road further than others, while others obviously failed to kick the can far enough. When this is all over (and we have yet a long way to go), we can compare the death rate in different countries and then get a better picture of who failed and who succeeded.

As for now, all I can say is that I am very happy and grateful that I live here in Sweden during this pandemic and I feel as safe here as I would in any other place on earth at this moment. I also very much trust the Swedish health care authorities and experts (which include some of the world’s most well renowned) and the Swedish government — certainly much more than I trust Donald Trump (and the Russian trolls from which he gets his information).

I cannot see into the future, so I can’t say how successful Sweden (or any other country) will be in the fight against the new corona virus and covid 19. But if Sweden ultimately fails or has a worse result than Italy, Spain, France, Austria, New York and other states and countries, it will not be because the government conducted any kind of cynical “experiment” with its citizens, nor will it be because of a callous pursuit of herd immunity.