Sweden has been following a voluntary lock-down for some time now. Those who feel ill (with a cold or influenza-like symptoms) have been asked to stay at home. Those over 70 have been asked to self-isolate, stay home and only go out if absolutely necessary. Formally, only public gatherings of over 500 are not permitted. People have been asked to be socially distant but there are no compulsive measures. The strategy is absolutely reliant upon people being responsible. Of course, there are cases of irresponsible young people. However, bearing in mind that the areas of critical judgement in the human brain are not fully developed till the age of 25, this is not too surprising. Mass testing for the virus is not being carried out. Only those who clearly show symptoms and require hospital treatment are tested. Large scale testing of hospital staff and health care workers is being done. So there is no clear number of how many are actually infected. The only reliable statistics are the number of those hospitalized, those in intensive care and those who have died. Of course, the markets have crashed and small businesses are dying. Travel services, restaurants and all the service industries are in deep trouble. Big companies are sending workers home and declaring redundancies at an alarming rate. Economic support packages are being announced every few days.
Anders Tegnell is the chief epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency and is on the news every day. To me he has been the face of common sense, even if many “influencers”, some in the media and prominent celebrities have been crying out for draconian measures to be applied (always it seems, to others). Saint Greta has been starved of attention and has just dramatically announced that she has probably been infected with Covid-19 but is recovering. (!!!??). It is not yet clear if the relatively low-key Swedish approach has worked and it will be some time before this real crisis is over. It is quite interesting that Sweden takes the common sense approach when dealing with a real crisis but becomes hysterical when dealing with imaginary crises. Virus smart but climate dumb. However, every day that goes by without the number infected increasing sharply (“day zero” when exponential growth takes off) means that the time baseline has been extended and the potential peak has been reduced. It is thought that it needs 80 days after “day zero” for the virus to have run its course.
Anders Tegnell: “Contrary to many other countries, like Great-Britain or Germany, the number of infections in Sweden has not yet started to incline dramatically, despite the fact that 36 Swedes have already died of covid-19. No region, not even Stockholm where the virus has spread considerably, has already experienced their ‘day zero’. Everything lies still ahead of us. Moreover, day zero will most likely not arrive simultaneously in the different Swedish regions.”
As of writing there have been 44 deaths in Sweden attributed to the virus and nearly all had some other underlying conditions.
The voluntary approach can only work if the sense of civic responsibility is strong. Civic responsibility runs high here. I note that it had to be enforced in China where they seem to be coming out of the crisis. It also runs voluntarily very high in S Korea and Japan where the curve does seem to have been flattened.
At the personal level, we have been “social distancing” for more than a week. Our lives are somewhat discommoded. It isn’t quite warm enough to be out on the deck. Much needed and necessary surgery is inevitably being delayed since intensive care places are limited. We don’t have the usual network of relatives or friends to run our errands or do our shopping for us but I remain quite hopeful that common sense will prevail.
Tags: coronavirus, covid-19
The k2p blog 
March 31, 2020 at 10:57 am
[…] Sweden’s voluntary lock-down may be able to flatten the curve […]