Sweden’s Soft Approach To COVID-19 Has Already Failed
At least in my eyes.
While countries around the globe have been implementing strict social distancing rules and lock-downs, Sweden chose to go with a much softer approach. The only measures implemented consist of banning gatherings of more than 50 people, closing down high schools & universities and urging citizens over 70 to isolate themselves. This means that the majority of businesses remain open as well as elementary schools.
According to their prime minister Stefan Lofven , the country’s approach is based on “common sense” to keep the country operating by relying on the development of “herd immunity”.
Sweden is essentially taking the risk of letting its people develop natural immunity to the virus by becoming infected with it. While it does sound like a crazy thing to do — there isn’t sufficient evidence to confirm the failure nor the success of the Swedish experiment — for now.
But what factors did the country rely on to decide to implement such a risky approach? What makes its leaders so confident about their decisions ? Does the country not value its citizens’ health and well-being as much as its neighbours seem to do?
Those are all questions that many of us want answers for — So let’s break down some facts.
Sweden’s Public Health Infrastructure is One of The Most Reliable Systems
The Swedish national healthcare system is ranked as one of the best in the world. The government invested enormously in the healthcare infrastructure compared to other countries. With its high life expectancy rates — 79 for men and 83 for women, the country also has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in Europe. In addition to that, it has Europe’s highest rate of physicians per capita — at 3.3 per 1,000. This is also reflected in the country’s very high efficiency rate in service delivery. Despite being a highly decentralized system, Sweden’s health policy is considered a national-level responsibility.
Given all these impressive achievements, many can still argue that Sweden could not simply rely on its overall high quality healthcare system when the country is known to also struggle with a high rate of aging…
