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The Swedish math teacher became a prominent voice in the debate over the Swedish crown. Now he thinks it has turned into a trench warfare.
Math professor Tom Britton says he was wrong when he forecast the spread of the infection in April. Photo: Emma-Sofia Olsson / Svenska Dagbladet
Almost 7,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Sweden. In the last two weeks of November, an average of 30 new deaths were reported each day. On Wednesday, 174 new ones were reported.
The spread of the infection has increased dramatically and there is a sharp increase in the number of patients requiring intensive care.
According to the model of the Public Health Authority, it is not over. They estimate that the spread of the infection will peak in mid-December.
The same agency believed that Sweden would release a large second wave of infection as the country was hit so hard this spring, and it eased the crown’s measures until October.
But the second wave came in full force. Therefore, there is now an intense debate among various experts as to why this has happened and who knows better.
Virologist Fredrik Elgh is one of those who has criticized Sweden’s strategy. Epidemiologist Tove Fall is also in the debate on Twitter.
I was completely wrong
Math teacher Tom Britton is one of those who participated in the debate. His field of expertise is the creation of models for the spread of infectious diseases.
In mid-April, he received a lot of attention both at home and abroad for a forecast he made. He calculated that such a large proportion of Stockholm’s population was infected that they would reach herd immunity by mid-May.
All in late April, he estimated that 30 percent of Stockholmers were infected and that it would soon apply to half. That was not true.
Now he regrets having made the calculation.
“There were two reasons why the forecast was wrong,” says Britton.
– Covid-19 has a much more uneven spread than the flu. It spreads in clusters. Therefore, fewer were infected. Also, I hadn’t thought that the effect of infection control measures would be that great. It was also an effect of the season. Several people were outside, Britton says.
Tom Britton is an expert in statistics and models for the spread of infections. But the model he made this spring did not fit the new coronavirus. He behaved differently from the flu. Photo: Emma-Sofia Olsson / Svenska Dagbladet
– Sagittarius War
His model, which was widely discussed both in Sweden and internationally, did not correspond to reality. He has told Svenska Dagbladet that his prognosis may have led several Swedes to let their guard down too much this summer.
However, the professor has been praised by commentator Lisa Magnusson on Dagens Nyheter because he has admitted mistakes. She writes that the debate over the Swedish coronation has been characterized by skewed security.
Tom Britton also worries that the coronation debate will turn into a trench warfare among pundits. Believes that you have to listen to more than one expert.
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell is controversial and admired. Photo: Ali Lorestani, TT / NTB
Complete on Black Friday
According to Britton, there have been two camps in Sweden: on the one hand, a group of experts, called “The 22”, who have come out with harsh criticism of the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. On the other hand, Tegnell, who is apparently unwilling to change course.
– There is prestige in it when there are such strong contradictions. I don’t think the Public Health Authority was completely wrong. They have also done a lot of good things. But I think they should be willing to change, Britton told Aftenposten.
Mention, for example, the discussion about masks.
Instead of refusing to wear masks, they might say: Feel free to wear masks, but don’t forget to keep your physical distance.
The Swedish government has implemented stronger measures now than this spring. Among other things, no more than eight people can meet in a public place. But, among other things, the police would like to see people be even better at keeping separate. On Black Friday, the Stockholm police published a photo of a crowded shopping street.
Britton thinks it’s right that slightly stronger measures were put in place this fall and also thinks it would have been an advantage if they had arrived before the surge in hospital admissions was seen.
– Do you think Sweden should have also applied stricter measures this spring?
– It’s easy to be wise afterwards, so I’m not sure. But with the fact in hand, we should have reacted faster. The public health authority first thought there wouldn’t be such a large spread of the infection, Britton says.
On March 6, he wrote to the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell that there would be a wide spread of the infection in Sweden, according to the emails Dagens Nyheter has had access to.
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– What do you think is the reason why Sweden is so different from the rest of the Nordic countries, also this autumn?
– I think the spread of the infection would have been greater in Sweden than in Norway even if we had done the same. Stockholm, which was hit the hardest this spring, is much larger than Oslo. We also had a large infection in heavily immigrant areas. But also, we were not so good at preventing with measures.
He believes that the measures that have been put in place now are good.
– The question is whether it is enough to go around the curve. I dare not say that. But there are signs that the spread of the infection is not increasing as much as it used to, Britton says.
In April, Svenska Dagbladet was in Tom Britton’s office where he calculated models for the spread of the infection. But several of the assumptions turned out not to be true. Photo: Emma-Sofia Olsson / Svenska Dagbladet
How to use the models
Chief Physician Preben Aavitsland of the National Institute of Public Health says it is difficult to create models for the spread of infections.
– But it is even more complicated to use them correctly. The models are based on assumptions about what measures are applied and how effective they are. Therefore, forecasts must be viewed in light of these assumptions, he writes in an email.
He writes that the models do not answer the question “How will the epidemic go?”, But rather “How will the epidemic go if the current measures have the effect we think.”
Therefore, he does not think that it is correct to speak of “flashy” models. They are a tool to look at “a possible development under certain conditions so that we can change the measurements,” he writes.
