Sweden’s pandemic model is no model at all

Canadian caution beats Swedish swagger — at least in these pandemic times. And skeptics of Canada’s COVID-19 lockdown need to admit this is so.

For months, these grumpy, impatient souls have argued Canada should base its pandemic response on what’s happening in more freewheeling, easygoing countries like Sweden.

Photographs of Swedes laughing at outdoor cafés, lazing on park benches or sauntering down crowded Stockholm sidewalks — with no pretense of pandemic physical-distancing — sparked no end of envy.

Why were they having fun while we were making sacrifices? And that led to no end of questioning as to why the Canadian government didn’t adopt the pandemic strategy of a Nordic nation famed as a progressive, social democracy.

Roughly two months later, we have some answers. Canada’s lockdown is, for the most part, working in terms of preventing COVID-19 from overwhelming either our health system or our economy.

In contrast, the Swedish model is a spectacular bust. Even Sweden’s top epidemiologist, Dr. Anders Tegnell, the architect of the country’s hands-off approach admits this is largely so.

How do you say “fiasco” in Swedish? Every Canadian who chafed at our supposedly unnecessary restrictions, and especially those who protested in places such as Queen’s Park, should look it up.

Unlike Canada and most other Western nations, Sweden proudly refused to impose a strict lockdown. Most of its schools, stores, restaurants and pubs stayed open. The government did introduce measures to get people to work from home, physical distance in eateries and limit gatherings to no more than 50 participants. But compliance with these rules was largely voluntary.

All this was at the urging of Dr. Tegnell. Back in late March and early April, when his plan was rolled out, Swedish officials smugly suggested their population was socially-responsible and disciplined enough to do what was needed to inhibit the spread of the coronavirus while still enjoying life as close to “normal” as possible.

That hubris proved to be deadly. More than 4,500 Swedes have died from the virus. That works out to 44 deaths for every 100,000 people, one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the world and more than double the rate in Canada. It’s also more than four times higher than the infection rate of Denmark and roughly 10 times the rate found in Norway and Finland. One of the main reasons for the difference has to be because those three Nordic nations, like Canada, imposed strict lockdowns in early days.

Now, as Denmark, Norway and Finland begin to end restrictions as their number of new cases drops, Sweden’s death toll remains stubbornly high. Its hopes for “herd immunity” never materialized because not enough Swedes were exposed to the virus to limit its spread.

The country’s comparatively lax response to COVID-19 didn’t save its economy from falling into a deep recession, either.

We take no pleasure in making these observations. Dr. Tegnell and his colleagues surely tried to do what was best — and their decisions were based on scientific data and reasoning. Nor has every decision made by Canadian politicians and public health officials delivered the best imaginable results. At some point a full-scale review will be required into how all levels of government in Canada handled this crisis.

Already, however, the examples of Sweden, and countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States which eschewed early lockdowns, speak volumes. Better to be careful when entering unknown territory.