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In late April, five researchers wrote a DN debate article advocating that Sweden should follow other countries and choose the strategy that has come to be known as the hammer and dance. In the initial phase, the Hammer, more stringent restrictions are introduced to reduce the spread of infection to low levels. After that, Dansen commits, which involves extensive testing to detect new regional outbreaks at an early stage, which then quickly fade. The dance will continue until we have developed an effective vaccine or other cure, hopefully sometime in 2021, “the researchers write.
The hammer and dance have been emphasized by, among others, Christian Drosten, virologist and advisor to the German government. The strategy had its breakthrough with the extensive article “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance,” published in March on the Medium blogging platform. The article’s author, Tomas Pueyo, an engineer and marketer, built on a previous article in which he argued that drastic closures were the only correct way to deal with the pandemic.
– From what I understand, he is the one who invented the name. There is a lot of epidemiological madness in what he writes, says Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School.
From the beginning, he has been skeptical of the strategy.
– Pueyo calculated that it would be a disaster, with an incredible death toll and completely crowded hospitals. Sweden has shown that it was wrong. The pandemic has had very great consequences and it is terrible that so many have died. But there is a very big difference between what has happened and what Tomás Pueyo predicted would happen if we did not enter into an abrupt closure of society, he says.
Despite our high mortality rates Sweden has shown that it is possible to reduce the spread of infection to low levels even without the hammer. The hammer and the dance are also based on the fact that there will soon be safe vaccines for much of the population.
– It would only have been worth doing if the vaccine had arrived quickly. But now it takes a long time, and keeping communities closed already has major consequences for people’s physical and mental health, says Martin Kulldorff.
Why did Sweden choose a different path than most other countries?
– Sweden listened to infection epidemiologists, both within the Swedish Public Health Agency and outside it. From what I understand, only one or two Swedish infection epidemiologists have had different views: Björn Olsen and maybe someone else.
– Sweden has also had a better debate. The newspapers, including Dagens Nyheter, have published different opinions. I think that’s very good. In the United States and England, there has not been the same open discussion, says Martin Kulldorff.
