A Warning From Sweden’s Coronavirus Response

Forbes ^ | June 4, 2020 | William A. Haseltine

[Wuli]

“In truth, I didn’t look through your posting history so if your goalposts have been Dec 2020+ vs May then my apologies. However, they haven’t been pursuing herd immunity officially”

Maybe so, and I won’t bother find the links, or dispute yours, but my recollections is that conversationally they have admitted at times that if their strategy worked their population likely would have more herd immunity, by default; consequentially - “asymptomatic” and “mild” cases they did not try so hard to prevent with lock downs, while intending to give the more vulnerable greater protection and greater care. Intent versus result.

[DoodleBob]

In Sweden, mandates like lockdown etc aren't the domain of the govt but of people like Anders Tegnell: The Swedish constitution prohibits ministerial rule and mandates that the relevant government body, in this case an expert agency – the Public Health Agency – must initiate all actions to prevent the virus in accordance with Swedish law, rendering state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell a central figure in the crisis. The government usually follows agency advice – politicians overruling the advice from its agencies is extremely unusual in Sweden.

And while many Swedes liked the hands-off approach and trust authority figures (and, from what I read, it jived with Swedish zeitgeist), there are many who did not like their approach. It was these anti-hands off people who called it a herd immunity approach, and western media (who probably feared a successful Swedish COVID19 result) latched onto that terminology.

Herd immunity isn't very easy to obtain, which is probably why Dr Tegnell et al didn't push for it as an objective. It does seem to be a soft objective, and Dr Tegnell admitted as much. But with Herd Immunity getting tagged as objective, when the percentage of Swedes with immunity came up at around 7% - way below what some people claimed it would be like 20-40% - then the good Dr did a bit of an apology tour. The high per capita fatality count didn't help, nor that it was chiefly older "defenseless" people.

I would not be surprised if we hear that Dr Tegnell steps down, and some Fauci-like puke takes over and drives the country further into the ground with a Michigan style of dictatorship. And that would be a tragedy.

[Wuli]

“I would not be surprised if we hear that Dr Tegnell steps down, and some Fauci-like puke takes over”

I think you are right.