Swede here:
It's complex. I'm extremely unhappy with the way the Swedish gov handled this.
I see two main failures:
1. Not reacting quickly enough. Denmark and Norway reacted quickly and strongly back in early March 2020. At this critical point, Sweden's "CDC" dropped the ball in a monumental manner, and the government didn't pick it up.
2. Not protecting municipal elderly homes in a competent way, early on. This is where most deaths happened. Norway in particular handled this so much better.
And of course we should compare ourselves to e.g. Denmark/Norway/Finland.
I think the root cause of all this is that Sweden has not been involved in a war in a very long time, unlike our neighbors. We're pretty good when things are stable, but apparently awful when things are dynamic/shit is going down.
Of course I have very specific opinions on what "actually" went wrong and why, but that would be too detailed to be useful here and also way too partisan.
It's complex. I'm extremely unhappy with the way the Swedish gov handled this.
I see two main failures:
1. Not reacting quickly enough. Denmark and Norway reacted quickly and strongly back in early March 2020. At this critical point, Sweden's "CDC" dropped the ball in a monumental manner, and the government didn't pick it up.
2. Not protecting municipal elderly homes in a competent way, early on. This is where most deaths happened. Norway in particular handled this so much better.
And of course we should compare ourselves to e.g. Denmark/Norway/Finland.
I think the root cause of all this is that Sweden has not been involved in a war in a very long time, unlike our neighbors. We're pretty good when things are stable, but apparently awful when things are dynamic/shit is going down.
Of course I have very specific opinions on what "actually" went wrong and why, but that would be too detailed to be useful here and also way too partisan.