As the rest of Europe closed down, in Sweden bars remained open, friends socialised, masks were not – and still aren't – obligatory. Five months on, the country has had five times as many cases as its neighbours, but it's sticking to Plan A. Tom Whipple finds out why – starting with the prime minister, Stefan Lofven.
The Swedish word borgfred translates as "castle peace". In times of crisis, when the enemy is at the gates, formerly warring parties come together. They line the ramparts, put their differences aside and face a common foe together. They agree on borgfred.
In January and February, Asia went into lockdown. In March, as Italy's health service neared collapse, it was Europe's turn. In country after country, during one dramatic fortnight, schools closed, shops were shuttered, workers stopped working.
An entire continent was stopped. Or, almost an entire continent.
It's not over… we might have another six months of this. Let's wait for the final outcome." - Stefan Lofven
At the top of Europe, there was one country that kept going. Its citizens were, it is true, told to be careful. There were restrictions on large gatherings. There was a lot of advice on handwashing. But while the rest of us stayed inside growing our hair, in Sweden people sat in coffee shops and visited salons. They went to bars and restaurants. They went to work. It seemed, to us, as if they lived life.
They looked at the world behaving differently and shrugged; backing for the government stayed high. The opposition were supportive. Coronavirus was at the gates, but within Sweden there was unity. Even as it diverged from the world, borgfred prevailed.
For outsiders, watching pictures from Sweden during the long and dull lockdown evoked that curious response many of us now get watching television dramas showing social interactions before Covid-19. People met friends and family. They shook hands. Sometimes, although the country's social distancing recommendations frowned on it, they hugged. It was thrilling, bittersweet and oddly disconcerting.
The question we all wanted answered was, were they right? And, its uncomfortable corollary, were the rest of us mad?
Throughout the spring, Swedes continued to support the country's exceptionalism. They continued with borgfred, as photos of them gathered in the sun continued to appear in the world's press. In the shadows, though, deaths rose. Before March was out there were 100. By the second week of April, there were 1,000.
In Norway, Denmark and Finland, death rates were at most a fifth that of Sweden.
This was when there were the first signs of Sweden's tentative borgfred crumbling. In mid-April (1,500 deaths), 22 scientists wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter, a national newspaper, accusing "officials without talent" of having "no well-thought-out, well-functioning strategy".
Then in June (5,000 deaths), borgfred shattered. Ebba Busch, the leader of the Christian Democrats, dropped her solidarity. "The greater part of those who are now mourning over those they have lost this spring are doing so because Sweden quite knowingly allowed a large spread of the infection," she said.
Castle peace was at an end and Stefan Lofven, the 63-year-old prime minister, called an inquiry. Dr Anders Tegnell, his state epidemiologist, confessed that he would do things differently given a second chance (though many reports missed off that he would not do things that differently).
In locked-down countries, bored of restrictions and tired of being taunted by the tantalising Swedish counterexample, this was framed as vindication. As we squabbled over sourdough starters and toilet roll, our hardships were validated. The Swedish model had collapsed.
Lofven, though, sees it differently. "Sometimes, too often, we have a black and white picture of this," he says, speaking to me over Zoom. "The pandemic," he reminds me, "is not over."
The world is stilled. More than that, it is fractured. Planes no longer fly. Borders remain shut. Quarantines are in place for those who do travel.
Where once we wandered at will in our globalised village, today our footprint is that of a medieval peasant – leading a life where visiting the next actual village (or, the nearest Waitrose) constitutes a grand day out.
I will eat my hat if the other Nordic countries have the same death rates in a year." - Dr Lena Einhorn
In this world, Sweden has ceased for many to be a destination, a country to which you travel for business or pleasure. It has, instead, become an argument. A nation that went its own way is now a case study to be mustered in the clash between right and left.
If you like chloroquine, don't like masks and perhaps do like Brexit, then Sweden is the exemplar of a nation that kept its head. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that it has held out against masks, when even Trump is wearing one.
If you like making NHS murals and reporting on your neighbours when they have too many guests at their barbecue, then Sweden is – as The New York Times recently termed it – a cautionary tale. It is a warning of what happens when you don't respect the virus.
Lofven has enough going on at the moment not to be drawn into a culture war. His approach, he says, is a reflection of the way the country is organised, and it "suits us". With the sort of careful neutrality that kept his country out of wars for two centuries, he adds, "Perhaps not other countries – and I do want to respect them." Throughout our interview, he won't be drawn into criticism of other countries' approach. Lofven, whose English is, needless to say, perfect, is as practical and inoffensive as an Ikea Billy bookcase. Hard to dislike, unlikely to surprise.
Neither, though I prod several times, will he confess to any feelings of doubt about his own strategy, even as deaths approach 6,000 – in a country of just 10 million. At least at this stage in the pandemic, the country is among the worst performers in the world (the UK – and we will come on to this – is worse). If he were English, you would say he plays a straight bat.
There is no equivalent Swedish idiom to that phrase – although there is one that is used when someone has screwed up and knows judgment is coming: skita i det blaa skapet. It translates, somewhat mysteriously as "to shit in the blue cupboard". Given the divergence between policies in Sweden and the rest of Europe, it feels impossible that one of the parties hasn't soiled a cupboard somewhere.
"We get into debates where everybody needs to defend their own choice. That's, to some extent, understandable," Lofven says. If there's a cupboard in need of a clean-up, either he's responsible for it or he's too polite to say who is. "I think we can learn from one another. I don't think it's black or white. We have different circumstances, different ways of running our societies, different decision processes, and so I think we need to be cautious."
There is a view, not as absurd as it initially sounds, that Sweden did not go its own way. Instead, it is everyone else who abandoned Sweden.
Many major European countries had pandemic plans. In many, including Britain, they were largely the same: suppress the virus, but don't stop it. A year ago, the idea that you could stop a society seemed absurd.
Back in March, Sweden stuck to the plan, then watched as everybody else blinked.
"We have not chosen a totally different strategy, a totally different approach," says Lofven. Behind him on Zoom is a screen made of blue curtains. It is a blank and oddly distracting backdrop, as if it is waiting for a special effects technician to project something more interesting onto it, something from a world before lockdown.
"We work with the same basic strategy: to make sure that we try to limit the spread of the disease, flatten the curve, so that the healthcare sector can handle this situation – we did not want a dramatic increase of cases so that intensive care could not cope – trying to protect the elderly, and also making sure that we could somewhat dampen the effects of the economy on companies, enterprises and workers. Those are the things I think everybody approves of broadly."
Elsewhere, watching Italy with panic and southeast Asia for inspiration, countries tore up their own plans and went further. They closed schools – a move some now regret. They closed shops and businesses. They ordered people to stay at home.
Did he have twinges of doubt, as he saw the world change course? "When I listened to our experts, I saw that they knew what they were talking about... For me as a politician to say I know better than you? I couldn't find arguments against it."
He was, in a familiar phrase, following the science. And if his science is different to that of other countries? If other national experts – just as eminent as his – had different advice? Well, to employ a phrase used by Tegnell, that is when you need ice in the stomach.
The life of a Swede in a pandemic, Lofven is keen to point out, is not so different from that of the rest of us. Yes, more of their rules come as recommendations – but Swedes are good at obeying recommendations.
Swedes, like us, are getting used to Zoom. They are, like us, far more likely now to work from home. Mobility data shows an initial 20 per cent drop in mobility – far less than, say, Spain but still astonishing in peacetime.
"We didn't choose a totally different path. If you have symptoms, stay at home. Keep the distance. Don't be in crowds."
The clearest difference is that they kept their schools open. They decided that the risk was low and the disruption was high – a judgment many in other countries now agree with. "Afterwards we can see, perhaps, that other countries that did close the schools say now that perhaps if there's another round [of outbreaks] they will not close."
When Swedes do go out, for their tantalising coffees in town squares, just like us they try to keep their distance – and drink in bars and restaurants with strict conditions on capacity and mixing.
Meanwhile, the rest of Europe is speeding up once more. We are keeping our distance; we are being careful. Our schools are tentatively opening, our pubs and restaurants operate under strict conditions on capacity and mixing.
Some may think that Sweden at the beginning should have acted more like the rest of Europe. What is clear, though, is that the rest of Europe is now acting like Sweden.
So much so that Dr Mike Ryan, head of the emergencies programme at the World Health Organisation, pointed to the country as a route out of lockdown. "If we are to reach a new normal, in many ways Sweden represents a future model," he said.
In the months to come, as the health and economic cost of lockdown becomes clear, the rest of Europe may well find – Lofven and his advisers contend – it would have been prudent to withhold their early judgment.
His approach – or, rather, the approach of the national health agency, to whom much of the decision-making is deferred – has always been that this is a marathon. And, like a runner in a marathon, it is important to start at a pace you can maintain.
"We wanted to implement measures and to take decisions that we thought could be sustainable for a long time," he says. "Locking down a society? You can't do that for too long.
"We must be halfway through – we might have another six months with this pandemic – so let's wait for the final outcome."
That means, also, that there will be six months more of the world poring over the data from his nation's experiment – using it for validation or refutation of their own pet theories in an endless global culture war.
Last month, as the US stood on the brink of corona-pocalypse, Fox News ran a segment headlined, "What the US can learn from Sweden". On Lockdown Sceptics, the website started by Toby Young – Britain's reliably contrarian libertarian – Sweden is described as "Exhibit A for the prosecution". There was no need to add that the defendants are the leftie lockdown fanatics.
So it is that Lofven, a socialist raised by foster parents, who never graduated from university and rose through politics thanks to the unions, finds himself in the unlikely position of being fêted abroad by elements of the political right, even as he battles criticism from his own anti-immigration right wing at home. Who is correct? Who has a slowly festering blue cupboard?
Before outlining Sweden's position as case for the lockdown prosecution, here is the case for Sweden as a cautionary tale.
In March, there was a prediction by a senior epidemiologist advising the Swedish government that, despite the international panic, the pandemic would be no worse than a bad flu season. At the upper end, as many as 2,000 would die. Then herd immunity would come, and the virus would go away. Countries could try to stop it, but there was little point: lockdown was delaying the inevitable.
Lofven disputes, as British politicians do, that herd immunity was ever the aim, rather than a useful possible side-effect. But neither was the goal stopping the virus entirely. They wanted to flatten the curve, not eliminate it.
So, in the argument of the Sweden-sceptics, the sort who were out every Thursday clapping "our" NHS or knitting tea cosies for nurses, death came. The virus was allowed to rip through the country, at one point giving it the highest death rate in the world. Despite not closing businesses or shops, the economy is still set to contract, but with thousands more deaths to show for it.
Worse, the virus is still spreading and, unlike in countries that had lockdowns, vulnerable people still live in fear. And after all that pain, herd immunity has not come. According to antibody tests, at the end of April around 85 per cent of the population had not been infected. Public health officials think more may have "hidden immunity", but given we don't even know what immunity antibodies confer, that is – the lockdown lovers point out – quite a reach.
Moreover, this is, as Lofven himself points out, just the midway point. Because the virus is still circulating and so, come the autumn, there is a greater reservoir of infection to launch a second wave. Is it any wonder that when the other Scandinavian nations initially reopened borders with each other, they kept crossings to Sweden closed? Last month, tired of waiting for coronavirus to be eliminated from her fiancé's home, a Norwegian bride married her Swedish groom at the border – the international restrictions forming an unusually rigid delineation between the two sets of guests.
Dr Lena Einhorn, a virologist and one of the 22 signatories of the article that first criticised the government, says she has been mystified by the country's response – not just in not locking down, but also in resisting masks, in being slow at testing and in a resistance to the idea that asymptomatic people could spread it. A purely symptom-based quarantine policy looks less sensible if a large proportion of people don't get symptoms. "Sweden has still not implemented basic suppression or control measures that other countries have implemented," she says. "It's very hard to understand."
She thinks the policies, taken together, only really make sense if the assumption is we will all get it eventually – including, later, in other countries.
If this is the approach, then it is conceivable, over the course of the full pandemic, that other countries will fare as badly – having merely pushed back the virus until later. That is the rationale behind Lofven saying they wanted to impose measures that could last the course.
"We were keen on using methods that were as sustainable as possible, that people would adhere to," he says. "And for a long time, because we told the population, this is going to stay for a long time. Prepare yourself – we're not talking weeks, we're talking months. And we're still talking months."
But, Einhorn points out, how likely is it really that we will all end up the same? Sweden's approach, in the view of critics, is a fundamentally pessimistic one. It is a gamble that we will all suffer equally, that it's just a matter of when. This is a bet that science will stay static, that treatment will not improve, that public health officials have learnt nothing with the time lockdown bought them.
"Why should you push this in front of you as far as possible, as other countries have done?" Einhorn asks. "First, to build up testing capacity, so if you get an outburst, you can immediately do contact tracing and stop it. The other reason is because of treatments and vaccines." If we are lucky, there will be a vaccine by Christmas. There are already treatments shown to work. She is sceptical of Lofven's approach, to say the least. "I will eat my hat if the other Nordic countries have the same death rates in a year."
Nothing is certain. It's possible that one day Norway might see its pandemic plan as a foolhardy bet on a future that never came. For now, though, Sweden's neighbour has other problems. In this part of Scandinavia, all respiratory diseases have been crushed by the lockdown, and elderly Norwegians aren't getting the flu either. With too few deaths to support a funeral industry, Norway's undertakers have had to ask for a coronavirus bailout.
Here, though, is the counterargument, the one practised by the US right, by British libertarians – but also by some British scientists suspicious of what, in their view, mathematicians and amateur programmers have wrought.
By now, according to the modellers, there should be bodies in the streets of Stockholm. Using similar approaches to that taken by Imperial College in Britain, epidemiologists predicted 50,000 Swedish deaths and a healthcare system that stopped working.
Lofven said he spoke to his advisers about this projection: "We thought it just didn't make sense."
They were right. The health system coped. In Sweden, without a lockdown, the curve has indeed been flattened, the epidemic has been contained, while for all the individual tragedies, society has moved on. Death rates, today, are below the seasonal average. So far, it seems Lofven's experts were right to question the models.
Is Sweden a cautionary tale or responsible exemplar? Or both?
The total death rate may, Lofven concedes, be currently a lot more than, say, Norway: 568 per million versus 47 per million. It is also, Lofven does not need to point out, less than lockdown Britain – which is on 680 per million.
As humans, we look for patterns in numbers and obvious causality. We find it easy to attribute an exceptional death rate to an exceptional policy. It is still not clear, though, why some countries do well and others less well. We want Sweden as an argument, not a nation. But life – and science – is not that simple.
"We need to see why, for example, Belgium and Germany were quite close, but had two different developments." Belgium currently has the worst death rate in the world, with 849 deaths per million, compared with 110 in Germany. "Look at Portugal [170] and Spain [608]. We have the same situation – two countries close, two different developments. What are the reasons for that? Was there a difference at the very start that caused the difference?" Why, to this day, does Spain have a higher infection rate than Sweden?
Sweden's high death rate may be because of not having a lockdown. Maybe, though, it is also because of holidays. At the end of February, Swedes have a school holiday for winter sports called sportlov. Many families use it as a time to go skiing – in Sweden, but also south, in the Alps. When the Swedish skiers returned from northern Italy they, unlike the British friends they met on the piste, were not asked to quarantine.
"The truth is that we had people coming from other countries in Europe that also had the disease," says Lofven. "So we have a million people travelling in between these weeks. And that might have pushed the outbreak... We probably had a more dramatic increase of the pandemic at the start of the outbreak." Notably Stockholm's sportlov – it's a staggered holiday – was later than Gothenburg's, and Stockholm had a far worse outbreak.
Meanwhile, a large chunk of deaths, we know for certain, come from care homes, where, as in many other countries, isolated outbreaks caused mass fatalities.
Maybe, then, Sweden's approach is, actually, a fundamentally optimistic one. A number of Swedes I spoke to pointed to the same distinguishing feature of their society: trust. The government trusts citizens to behave responsibly, and in turn that's exactly what citizens do. The country is a mature alliance between citizen and state. "The way our society works is we decide upon laws, but we also have very strong [local] authorities with their own mandate, where the legislation is very clear we cannot interfere. That's illegal."
Or as Donald Trump put it, marvelling somewhat, in Sweden, if they say stay in your house, "The people stay there automatically."
So which view is correct? Sweden as cautionary tale or Sweden as responsible exemplar of a government in partnership with its people? The problem with these two arguments is not that they contradict each other, that one is true and the other false. It's that they don't. To an extent, both are true. The data you choose reveals as much about your own views as it does about Sweden.
Sweden is used to being a political test case. Normally, though, it is invoked by the left – a moderate and prosperous socialist utopia of gender equality and generous welfare where migrants are welcomed.
Lofven makes for an unlikely right-wing hero. When he was ten months old, he was placed in an orphanage, before being transferred to a foster home. "When I needed it the most, society supported me," he says. "They did so by making sure that when my biological mother could not take care of me, I got another chance and another family."
That was not the only time that Sweden gave him another chance. He did not come into politics after a degree. Instead, he qualified as a welder. Then, as used to happen on the left in Britain, he worked his way up through the unions, until today when he is the most powerful man in the country.
Again, this experience informed his views on the roles of government and of politics. "That is what happens with a strong society with the common goal to make sure that everybody, no matter the circumstances they were born with, should have the same possibilities."
To him, this is exactly what the government response is about – a mature relationship with the people. "It has to be done together. We need a society where everybody knows in their heart that they have a place in this project to lay the future for society."
In a year or maybe two, we will know the truth for certain. Until then, Lofven hopes we will defer judgment.
"The best thing we can give to people is the truth: this is what happened; this is what went wrong; this is what we did. And this is how we can change to protect ourselves better."
There is another Swedish word: lagom. It means just the right amount – not too much, not too little.
Stefan Lofven has given me my allotted time. He steps away from his chair, briefly leaving that blank blue screen on his Zoom background. Then, out of shot, he returns to managing what he very much hopes is lagom.
Written by: Tom Whipple
© The Times of London
