Inside sweden’s radically different approach to the coronavirus
no lockdown, no quarantines, just voluntary advice and a big dose of hope
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside...erent-approach-to-the-coronavirus-11585598175
no lockdown, no quarantines, just voluntary advice and a big dose of hope
The ski pistes are open, the restaurants are doing ample business and the malls are awash with shoppers.
Welcome to Sweden, the last holdout among the small number of Western countries to have taken a radically different approach to the coronavirus pandemic.
While social life in Europe and much of the U.S. now centers on the home after governments imposed increasingly drastic curbs on freedom of movement, Sweden left offices and stores open, issued recommendations rather than restrictions, and waited to see what happens.
Businesses, kindergartens and schools remain open. After a long winter, Stockholm’s street cafes and outdoor bars swelled with people over the weekend, and the city’s old town drew large crowds as locals ventured out to enjoy the good weather. The only mandatory rules are a ban on meetings of more than 50 people and an order forcing bars and restaurants to only serve seated customers so as to avoid overcrowding.
The U.K. and the Netherlands also briefly considered letting the virus propagate through the population in a controlled manner so as to build a natural form of immunity. Both reversed course after academics warned they could face hundreds of thousands of deaths and an overwhelmed health care system.
It is too early to assess whether Sweden’s approach will have a benign or catastrophic outcome, but so far, the virus hasn’t spread widely there. Sweden, with 10 million inhabitants, had 4,028 confirmed infections and 146 deaths by Monday, according to a tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Austria, a similarly-sized European country with about 8.8 million people that is under lockdown, had 9,200 cases and 108 deaths.
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist and architect of the policy, says the approach, much like the original British one, is to let the virus spread as slow as possible while sheltering the elderly and the vulnerable until much of the population becomes naturally immune or a vaccine becomes available.
The next two weeks will determine whether Sweden’s approach can succeed or if authorities bend to the reality of a rash of new cases, said Dr. Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a physician and professor at the Karolinska Institute.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside...erent-approach-to-the-coronavirus-11585598175