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This week, RodeZach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe sat down for an in-depth conversation with Johan Norberg about the lessons we can learn from Sweden’s pandemic policies
The Swedish government’s decision to forgo lockdowns as most of Europe, Asia and North America’s political leaders forcibly closed businesses and schools in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic became one of its most controversial policies of 2020.
The New York Times in April 2020, calling Sweden “the world’s cautionary tale,” and President Donald Trump exclaiming that “Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lock down,” as an early wave of COVID deaths hit Sweden harder than its Nordic neighbors.
But to Swedish officials, “it seemed as if they were other countries engaged in a dangerous experiment,” writes Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg in a policy paper titled “Sweden during the pandemic: pariah or paragon?”
Today, Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate is not an outlier, and the excess death rate from 2020 to date is the lowest in Europe.
In a retrospective report on the country’s pandemic response, Swedish public health officials say they should have more aggressively protected seniors and tested and quarantined travelers from COVID hotspots in those early days, but they believe the emphasis on public health recommendations that people can “Voluntarily Follow” over coercive lockdowns was “fundamentally correct.”
Norberg also points out that Sweden has avoided the economic contraction suffered by its neighbors, as well as the learning loss in countries that closed schools for months or even years.