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New book reveals the game behind the scenes
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Anders Tegnell had three alternatives: total closure, infection monitoring, or infection control to achieve herd immunity.
He chose the latter, despite strong warnings.
The new book “The Flock” reveals the game behind the so-called Swedish strategy.
By reviewing many emails, author Johan Anderberg has elaborated on the birth of the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell’s covid-19 strategy. Svenska Dagbladet has obtained an edited excerpt, as yet unpublished, from the book that describes in detail the game behind what would likely be Sweden’s most debated route choice in 2020.
On March 6, Anders Tegnell received a warning email from mathematician Tom Britton who calculated the R-value of the virus. There he expressed his opinion that the Public Health Agency was too passive: “With as many infected people as there are now in Sweden, the spread of infection will occur. Our society is not very different from Italy, or for the case of China, so why shouldn’t it spread among us?
Photograph: Staffan Löwstedt / SvD / TT
By reviewing many emails, author Johan Anderberg has crafted the birth of the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell’s covid-19 strategy.
Soon after, the same day, Jan Albert heard about him and said that he, Johan von Schreeb and Denis Coulombier, all leading doctors, had just met Anders Tegnell. That was important. If Tegnell has a small gap, they could be there in 30 minutes, according to SvD.
Finally, the three men were allowed to go to authority. And they had to deliver their warnings.
So in just a few hours, Tegnell was warned by four prominent people on the field.
But it didn’t end there.
On March 15, Peet Tüll, former head of the infection control unit at the National Board of Health and Welfare, sat down and wrote an email to Anders Tegnell. When Tüll retired, it was Anders Tegnell who got his job, albeit with somewhat different tasks.
The email he formulated referred to the strategies he considered possible to stop what would become a pandemic.
“Hello Anders. There are three strategies to stop the epidemic,” wrote Peet Tüll.
The first option was a total closure of the company for four weeks.
The second option was to find as many infected as possible, trace all close contacts, and quarantine them for two weeks.
The third option was:
“Allow the infection to spread, slowly or quickly, to achieve hypothetical ‘herd immunity’.”
Photo: Janerik Henrsson / TT
Jan Albert, Professor, Chief Physician, Department of Microbiology, Cell and Tumor Biology, Karolinska Institutet.
Peet Tüll himself considered alternative two to be the best. The infection had not yet spread too much and no one knew then that SARS-CoV-2 had a completely different potential for infection than previously similar pests, such as the 2003 SARS virus.
Choosing option 3, on the other hand, would lead to thousands of deaths.
“It seems to me a given and headless strategy, which I would never have accepted in my previous position.”
A few hours later, in the early afternoon, Anders Tegnell replied:
“Yeah, we’ve been through this and landed on 3. after all.”
Today, almost eight months later, just over 6,000 Swedes have died from covid-19.
At the same time, the outside world has largely embraced Sweden’s strategy.
What was right or wrong, and what worked or not, is hard to say. But the truth is that the debate will continue for a long time.
Photo: Pontus Lundahl / TT
Johan von Schreeb.
Photo: Bertil Ericson / TT
Denis Coulombier.
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