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STOCKHOLM (BLOOMBERG) – The chief architect of Sweden’s controversial response to the pandemic is losing the trust of the people who are supposed to follow his advice, and even the nation’s monarch has signaled his disapproval.
Dr Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist and the country’s leading advocate for an anti-lockdown strategy, saw his support drop 13 points in a poll published on Thursday (December 17), to 59 percent of respondents. Confidence in his employer, the Swedish Public Health Agency, fell to 52% from 68% in October, according to the survey by Ipsos and Dagens Nyheter.
“Confidence is on a downward spiral,” said Nicklas Kallebring, an analyst at Ipsos.
The latest survey follows cries for help from Swedish health workers, who are increasingly overwhelmed by a pandemic that has sickened and killed exponentially more compatriots than in any other Nordic country.
The situation has already overwhelmed intensive care units in Stockholm, and authorities are now rushing to draw up contingency plans.
Meanwhile, Dr. Tegnell has continued to defend Sweden’s general strategy of avoiding blockades. He also argues that there is no real evidence that face masks work, and Swedes are among the only people who go about their daily lives largely without masks, with shops, restaurants and gyms still open.
In an interview with broadcaster TV4, Dr. Tegnell said that no one can say whether Sweden’s strategy has failed.
“More or less all countries are struggling with this,” he said. But he acknowledged that the situation in his home country is dire.
“We are starting to approach the breaking point in many different ways,” he said. “I understand that healthcare is going through a very difficult time right now … the staff is exhausted,” which means that “the pressure on care is getting very, very great.”
More broadly, the Ipsos / Dagens Nyheter poll of 1,226 voters showed that trust in the authorities overall has fallen to a new low of 34%.
“If trust in the authorities disappears, fewer people will listen to the advice and recommendations they give,” said Kallebring of Ipos.
“It can have real life and death consequences.”
The king
The death toll from Covid-19 in Sweden is 7,802, the highest in the Nordic region in absolute terms and per capita. The situation has caused such a general commotion in the country that it provoked a rare verbal intervention from the King.
“The Swedish people have suffered enormously under difficult conditions,” King Carlos XVI Gustavo told state broadcaster SVT. Regarding the strategy deployed in Sweden, he said: “I think we have failed.”
In his interview with TV4, Dr. Tegnell said he was “surprised” by the intensity of the second wave of the pandemic.
“I think many of me are surprised that I was able to come back so strongly,” he said.
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