“Thanks for remembering,” replied Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell with a straight face when the Observer asked at the end of March how he handled the knowledge that it would be his fault if Sweden’s decision not to hold a lockdown went seriously wrong.
‘But seriously,’ he continued, ‘I may seem like a figurehead, but the agencies in Sweden work very well as a whole. This is not something I decide alone in my office every morning. “
The message was clear. He didn’t think he would be held responsible if the light Covid-19 regime linked to his name failed.
On Friday, when Sweden registered 9,654 new cases and 100 deaths, the country’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, suggested he might be right.
“This number of victims – we naturally wanted to prevent that. It’s nothing you want to see, ‘he said, announcing the end of Sweden’s long delay against recommending face masks. “But… the responsibility here is not so easy to point out exactly one person [and say] ‘you are responsible’. “
When Tegnell notified Boris Johnson in late September, it still seemed possible that the widespread spread of the infection in Sweden in the spring could provide enough immunity to better control a second wave.
With those hopes dashed, with levels of new daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths once again well above the level of the country’s Nordic neighbors, Dr. Tegnell and his former boss Johan Giesecke are no longer getting near-daily interviews from advocates. from herd immunity to the UK and US media.
But the shift in opinion within Sweden is even more evident. This is partly due to the fact that Tegnell’s Public Health Agency has failed to respond to the severity of the second wave, partly because of damning reports from the country’s health watchdog and coronavirus commission, and partly because of more critical media.
Even the country’s king, Carl XVI Gustaf, described the country’s handling of the pandemic as “a failure” in the Christmas review of the royals year.
“Opinion in Sweden has really changed: there is widespread criticism of the strategy and [a sense] that we really failed, ”said Jenny Madestam, associate professor of politics at Södertorn University in Stockholm.
In March and April, the media was more inclined to defend than criticize the authorities, with dissident investigators raising the alarm in early April as ‘corona scandal mongers’ and ‘a disgrace to Sweden’ on the debate pages.
Eva Burman, editor-in-chief of the regional Eskilstuna-Kuriren the paper, recalls how shocking revelations in May about how elderly people in care homes were not receiving hospital treatment were ignored.
“That story was never published in the other papers: I think it was maybe such a big story that they couldn’t include it. They thought it might not be true,” she said. “I don’t know why the Swedish media is so slow to ask critical questions.”
But according to Marina Ghersetti, associate professor of journalism at the University of Gothenburg, this is typical of how the Swedish media operates in a crisis. “This is a pattern we’ve seen before. In the beginning, when everything is uncertain and chaotic, the focus is … on passing the information that government agencies give to the media without really questioning that information, ”she said.
“One possible explanation for this is that even those in the media share the great confidence we have in the government.”
Only when the situation becomes more stable do the Swedish media – almost as one – become critical and start investigating. “We have this expression, ‘herd behavior’, a kind of consensus: when one person really starts to research and investigate, the others do too,” Ghersetti said.
“Every major newspaper, the radio and television, has really started digging on this, and not just the conditions in retirement homes, but also the strategy.”
This month, the Swedish Health and Social Care Inspectorate reported “serious deficiencies” in the treatment of the elderly, confirming Burman’s story.
Mortality rate in Sweden
Only one in twenty suspected coronavirus patients had physically seen a doctor. Several regions had issued guidelines recommending that residents of care homes should not be treated in hospital for any illness or injury. Some doctors had recommended palliative care without even looking at patient records.
The first report from the country’s coronavirus commission, released on Tuesday, fiercely criticized both the government and the Public Health Agency, saying they had “failed” to protect the elderly.
Despite a very limited remit, limited to investigating deaths in nursing homes, the committee criticized the strategy, arguing that “the major factor behind … the high number of deaths in residential care is the widespread spread of the virus in society. “.
Public confidence in Tegnell has now fallen to 59%, the lowest level since the start of the pandemic, according to an Ipsos poll last week. In October, he enjoyed the support of 72% of the respondents.
When asked whether she or someone else should resign, Health Minister Lena Hallengren pointed out how fragmented the Swedish health system is. Responsibility for day-to-day care lies with the 21 regions, for elderly care with the municipalities. The opposition parties, she added, supported the strategy during the spring and summer.
“It would be easy to say ‘it’s me, or it’s him or she’s’, but we are in the middle of a pandemic trying to make this extremely easy fix [demanding resignations], that is not a solution and does not give us better aged care, I don’t know. ”
But both Burman and Madestam said the resignation would eventually come, with Madestam predicting that Tegnell’s boss Johan Carlson, who will retire in October, could resign.
“We haven’t seen the end of this yet,” Burman agreed. “I think Christmas will bring an even steeper turn, and we’ll have more deaths. I think someone will have to step down. Otherwise we will send a very strong signal to our society that no one takes responsibility. “