We would like to find a scapegoat, but what about our own responsibility?

Published: December 04, 2020 at 7:22 p.m.

Published: December 04, 2020 at 7:22 p.m.

Mortality rates are increasing. The nightmare and tragedy of this spring are about to repeat themselves.

Our Nordic neighbors are still doing significantly better.

So the need to find a responsible person, a scapegoat, increases.

But what if the responsibility falls on you and me and not just Anders Tegnell and Stefan Löfven?

When the elderly died in the spring like flies in nursing homes at the same time that the death toll was much lower in Norway, Finland and Denmark, one of the explanations from the Public Health Agency was that they would instead be seen more affected in a second wave.

Now the second wave is here and the death toll is rising sharply again in Sweden, but not among our Nordic neighbors.

It didn’t turn out as predicted by the Public Health Agency.

Here again, one is tempted to add. Many of FHM’s predictions have turned out to be more or less wrong. As a prognosis at first, the virus would probably never become widespread in Sweden or that there would not be a strong second wave. In retrospect, it is easy to see that if we had done certain things differently, we probably would not have had such a strong spread of the infection in society.

The FHM could have urged everyone returning home from overseas trips after sports holidays to self-quarantine. Sweden could have closed its borders to everyone, including EU citizens, with the requirement of 14 days in supervised quarantine to travel to the country.

But these were measures that, when they should have been taken, had been considered excessive and very intrusive in people’s daily lives when we did not yet have a known social outreach in Sweden. They had been difficult to gain general acceptance.

But in hindsight, we know that closed borders have been an effective measure against infection. Combined with forced quarantine, extensive testing, and infection tracking.

Acted slowly

Look at South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia, all of which have very low death rates. All but China are islands or peninsulas that are easy to control and have strict quarantine and infection control rules.

Asia was also on alert after being hit by the even deadlier Sars in the early 2000s, caused by another coronavirus.

Sweden acted too slow and too slow to stop the infection. But had our people really agreed to weld the doors of their houses, as was done in Wuhan, China, to make sure people stay home?

Returning to the question that gnaws. How can Norway (66 deaths / million population), Finland (74) and Denmark (147) have much lower death rates than Sweden (681)? Ten times less dead. How can older brother Sweden be so much worse?

One thing that probably doesn’t matter is that they had stricter restrictions. Other Nordic countries generally have not had very different rules compared to Sweden. A little stricter but not much.

If we look across Europe, there are many countries that have had stricter blockades than the Nordic countries. Take, for example, Italy, Spain, France, Great Britain and Belgium, which have had months in which the population has hardly been allowed to stay outside for anything other than buying food, going out with the dog and going to the toilet. community.

How does it look there today?

Located at the top

All of these countries again have a very extensive spread of infection and high mortality rates. All but France (in 15th place) are among the top ten countries with the highest number of deaths per million inhabitants. Despite tough closings, they are doing worse than Sweden.

Obviously, the confinements are not a universal medicine.

Perhaps the simple explanation is that our Nordic neighbors received much less infection from abroad in the early stage when most were groping blindly. Countries that managed to keep infection at bay this spring have generally seen fewer infections even in the second wave that is now underway.

But there are a huge number of variables that must be weighed to come to a conclusion as to why the rest of the Nordic region has done better. We may never know the answer.

Covid-19 is an insidious and deadly disease. It creates not only sadness, but also extreme frustration in our societies. What should we do to get rid of it? How do we stop the virus? Why is it no longer being done?

We hope that those responsible, such as state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, will have definitive answers. When we don’t get any or when Tegnell’s forecasts repeatedly fail, it irritates us, distresses us, and angers us.

Someone must be responsible for the miserable situation we find ourselves in.
The bitter truth is, sadly, that the virus cannot be controlled. Covid-19 is an invisible enemy that we still know very little about and that has invaded every corner of the world. Even if extreme measures are taken, success is not guaranteed.

Blame others

The message from the authorities that social distancing is essential to avoid getting or spreading the infection is hardly lost on anyone. Still, we interpret it very differently.

I hear annoyed people on various channels say how they have been in the city and shopping and surprised by the number of people in the stores and the congestion on the buses and trains. So I usually think; but yourself then? You are there and you contribute to the congestion.

But it is as if we are blind to our own actions. When the authorities strictly urge people not to shop on Black Friday, we hear the statement, but we think it applies to everyone else, but not ourselves. We have to make a cut. I think this blindness to our own behavior applies to most of us.

Just as those responsible constantly blame each other, we demand that others take responsibility, but we are not interested in doing it themselves.

Many people ask for stricter restrictions, but no matter how severe the restrictions are, they won’t help if people don’t follow them.

Those in charge of the Swedish Public Health Agency and the government must, of course, be held accountable for how the corona pandemic is handled. A little more humility and the ability to admit mistakes on your part wouldn’t hurt.

But the responsibility to reduce infection rests with all of us. It doesn’t help simply to complain about those in power.

From: Wolfgang Hansson

Published: December 04, 2020 at 7:22 p.m.

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Published: December 04, 2020 at 7:22 p.m.