Stockholm / Prague In early 2020, Anders Tegnell, a 64-year-old doctor specializing in infectious diseases, collected data on the morbidity of Sweden’s roughly 10 million people and was preparing for a mission to Somalia to help establish a public health institute. However, the covidu-19 pandemic completely changed his plans. He is now a controversial figure who divides both the Swedish and foreign public, writes the Financial Times.
Anders Tegnell:
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In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic began to spread around the world, this lower official of the Swedish bureaucracy suddenly became central to the fight against the virus. “Swedish Prymula” rejected the national or local quarantine, which was approached by European states following the example of China, from where the new coronavirus first spread. He argued that closing shops, cafes, schools and places where people meet in general is an unnecessary blow to the economy, because the virus will be with us permanently and we must learn to live with it. He called on citizens to act responsibly, after which the country’s leadership took only very mild measures. In the media, Tegnell always appeared calmly and in fact.
In April, the government was accused of trying to achieve collective immunity, which Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren soon vehemently denied. As the country has maintained a pre-pandemic rhythm of life while other states have closed themselves off to the outside world and imposed severe restrictions on their citizens, Tegnell still symbolizes a rational approach to restrictions for many Swedes. For example, they have his face copiously tattooed on their bodies. But for outside observers, the doctor is a much more controversial figure.
Tattooed image of Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist.
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Although some British and Americans call him a true freedom fighter, many see him more as the person responsible for the deaths of thousands of older people in nursing homes. It was not the protection of this risk group that was one of the reasons why Sweden has the fifth worst mortality per capita in the EU, ahead of Italy (4th), Spain (3rd), Britain (2nd) and Belgium (1). .).
Sweden is not moving away from its tactic of milder measures, even with the growing number of infected |
Compared to neighboring countries, Sweden is five times worse than Denmark (1 death for every 9200 inhabitants) and ten times worse than Norway (1 death for every 20,500 inhabitants), with one death for every 1,750 inhabitants. or Finland (1 death for every approximately 16,373 inhabitants).
It is important to note that Sweden has a slightly higher population density than neighboring Norway and Finland, so the virus can theoretically spread better here, even if it is not such a drastic difference. Compared to the roughly equally populous Czech Republic, Sweden now has more than twice as many confirmed cases of the disease and more than 5,000 dead.
A place for improvement
The main Swedish strategist himself in the fight against the pandemic admitted that the situation did not turn out exactly as he had imagined. “Obviously there is great potential for improvement here,” he said on radio in early June. The Nordic country is still one of the few where citizens are not officially advised to wear mouth and nose protection.
Sweden did not choose the best strategy, it admitted the architect of ignoring the virus. Next time he wants to proceed differently |
“Tegnell is very stubborn,” an unspecified Swedish epidemiologist criticizes his medical colleague for the Financial Times.
Another blow to the Swedish approach was the fact that it was caught up in globalization, the disadvantage of very closely interconnected national economies. Although the Swedish National Bank still expected modest GDP growth for the country in the first quarter of 2020 (between 1-2%), the forecast for the first half of the year was already negative: a decline in GDP of at least 4.5%. Unemployment rose by almost two percentage points to 9% in May, from 7.1% in March.
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Stubborn like a bull
Sweden has not saved the economy, it will fall by up to six percent. The country has more dead than neighboring states |
However, Anders Tegnell did not give up. Already in the spring, he claimed that the most important moment would come in the autumn. In a situation where it seems clear that the second wave of covid-19 has arrived and the numbers infected in many European countries are on the rise again, Sweden is experiencing relatively calm.
According to the Worldometers server, a total of 86,505 confirmed infections reached on Monday, but the new daily increases are 90% smaller than at the end of June, when Sweden experienced the peak of the pandemic wave.
For the first time in 5 months, Swedish daily gains are lower than in Norway and Finland, in the hundreds.
Even the critically speaking epidemiologist acknowledges that all this is largely due to Tegnell’s merit, which manifests itself in the ability to become one’s face in the face of the whole world and not dodge. Thanks to the Swedish constitution, all decision-making lies with experts from the Institute of Public Health, headed by the unsmiling Tegnell spectacle, and not with politicians.
Asked if it would be better to go with the crowd, he answers: “Of course it was. But I’m not alone. ”Shortly afterwards, he will start naming 500 employees of his institute, and then he will continue to the members of the government and the citizens themselves.
The WHO has misjudged the data, Sweden argues. It is said that more frequent testing can be considered more infected |
“It’s like killing a fly with a hammer,” Tegnell said of national quarantines and restrictions. “You can’t keep closing, opening and closing again, it will be a disaster,” he adds. One of the few countries that also failed to “shut down the state” at some point in the course of the epidemiological crisis was authoritarian-led Belarus. “It can’t be compared,” laughs Tegnell, adding that Belarus must have gone into the same category by accident.
“Sweden will now have a low level of virus spread with the possibility of occasional local outbreaks,” says Tegnell. “What’s going to happen in other countries will be more dramatic.” “. “What protects Copenhagen today?” He digs into a nearby state.
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What all the world seems to forget is that people are dying every day everywhere by different things. What really matters is how many “out of the ordinary” deaths does a country have. How many more deaths than usual does a country have?