Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s failed anti-COVID strategy, at a 2020 news conference.
(Associated Press)
Throughout much of the pandemic, Sweden has stood out for its ostensibly successful effort to beat COVID-19 while avoiding the harsh lockdowns and social distancing rules imposed on residents of other developed nations.
Swedish residents were able to enjoy themselves at bars and restaurants, their schools remained open, and somehow their economy thrived and they remained healthy. So say their fans, especially on the anti-lockdown right.
A new study by European scientific researchers buries all those claims in the ground. Published in Nature, the study paints a devastating picture of Swedish policies and their effects.
Projected ‘natural herd-immunity’ levels are still nowhere in sight.
— Brusselaers, et al, Nature
“The Swedish response to this pandemic,” the researchers report, “was unique and characterized by a morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable laissez-faire approach.”
The lead author of the report, epidemiologist Nele Brusselaers, is associated with the prestigious Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm; her collaborators are affiliated with research institutes in Sweden, Norway and Belgium.
The details of Swedish policies as described by Brusselaers and her co-authors are horrifying. The Swedish government, they report, deliberately tried to use children to spread COVID-19 and denied care to seniors and those suffering from other conditions.
The government’s goal appeared geared to produce herd immunity — a level of infection that would create a natural barrier to the pandemic’s spread without inconveniencing middle- and upper-class citizens; the government never set forth that goal publicly, but internal government emails unearthed by the Swedish press revealed that herd immunity was the strategy behind closed doors.
Explicit or not, the effort failed. “Projected ‘natural herd-immunity’ levels are still nowhere in sight,” the researchers wrote, adding that herd immunity “does not seem within reach without widespread vaccinations” and “may be unlikely” under any circumstances.
That’s a reproach to the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely criticized white paper endorsing the quest for herd immunity and co-written by Martin Kulldorf, a Sweden-born Harvard professor who has explicitly defended his native country’s policies.
The country’s treatment of the elderly and patients with co-morbidities such as obesity was especially appalling.
“Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives,” the researchers wrote. “Potentially life-saving treatment was withheld without medical examination, and without informing the patient or his/her family or asking permission.”
In densely populated Stockholm, triage rules stated that patients with co-morbidities were not to be admitted to intensive care units, on grounds that they were “unlikely to recover,” the researchers wrote, citing Swedish health strategy documents and statistics from research studies indicating that ICU admissions were biased against older patients.
These policies were crafted by a small, insular group of government officials who not only failed to consult with experts in public health, but ridiculed expert opinion and circled the wagons to defend Anders Tegnell, the government epidemiologist who reigned as the architect of the country’s approach, against mounting criticism.
The bottom line is that Swedes suffered grievously from Tegnell’s policies. According to the authoritative Johns Hopkins pandemic tracker, while its total death rate from February 2020 through this week, 1,790 per million population, is better than that of the U.S. (2,939), Britain (2,420) and France (2,107), it’s worse than that of Germany (1,539), Canada (984) and Japan (220).
Sweden has done better than the U.S. and Britain against COVID, but worse than many other countries that imposed stricter lockdowns and much worse than its Nordic neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland.
(Johns Hopkins University via Our World in Data)
More tellingly, it’s much worse than the rate of its Nordic neighbors Denmark (961), Norway (428) and Finland (538), all of which took a tougher anti-pandemic approach.
Anti-lockdown advocates continue to laud Sweden’s approach even today, despite the hard, cold statistics documenting its failure.
The right-wing economic commentator Stephen Moore, a reliably wrong pundit on many topics, preened over Sweden’s death rate compared to other countries that imposed more stringent lockdowns: “Sweden appears to have achieved herd immunity much more swiftly and thoroughly than other nations,” Moore wrote.
That was better than the rate of 6.84 in the U.S. , where lockdowns had been fading and had always been spotty, and in Denmark (5.65), but worse than France (3.97), Germany (2.23), Britain (2.23), Canada (2.03) and Norway (0.92).
Moore also declared, “What is clear today is that the Swedes saved their economy.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, of which Sweden is a member, isn’t quite so sanguine.
The OECD found that in terms of pandemic-driven economic contraction, Sweden did marginally better than Europe as a whole, but markedly worse than its Nordic neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland, “despite the adoption of softer distancing measures, especially during the first COVID wave.” COVID-19, the OECD concludes, “hit the economy hard.”
The Nature authors show that Swedish government authorities denied or downplayed scientific findings about COVID that should have guided them to more reasoned and appropriate policies.
These included scientific findings that infected but asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people could spread the virus, that it was airborne, that the virus was a greater health threat than the flu and that children were not immune.
The Swedish policymakers “denied or downgraded the fact that children could be infectious, develop severe disease, or drive the spread of the infection in the population,” the Nature authors observe. At the same time, they found, the authorities’ “internal emails indicate their aim to use children to spread the infection in society.”
So the government refused to counsel the wearing of masks or social distancing or to sponsor more testing — at least at first. One fact that tends to be glossed over by anti-lockdown advocates is that Sweden did eventually tighten its social distancing regulations and advisories, though only after the failure of its initial policies became clear.
At first, in early March when other European countries went into strict lockdowns, Sweden only banned public gatherings of 500. Within weeks, it reduced the ceiling to 50 attendees. The state allowed no distance learning in schools at first, but later permitted it for older pupils and university students.
In June 2020, Tegnell himself acknowledged on Swedish radio that the country’s death rate was too high. “There is quite obviously a potential for improvement in what we have done in Sweden,” he said, though he backtracked somewhat during a news conference after the radio interview aired.
And in December 2020, King Carl XVI Gustaf shocked the country by taking a public stand against the government’s approach: “I think we have failed,” he said. “We have a large number who have died and that is terrible.”
He was correct. If Sweden had Norway’s death rate, it would have suffered only 4,429 deaths from COVID during the pandemic, instead of more than 18,500.
What may be especially damaged by the experience is Sweden’s image as a liberal society. The pandemic exposed numerous fault lines within its society — notably young versus old, natives versus immigrants.
The Nature authors underscore the irony of that outcome: “There was more emphasis on the protection of the ‘Swedish image’ than on saving and protecting lives or on an evidence-based approach.”
The lesson of the Swedish experience should be heeded by its fans here in the U.S. and in other lands. Sweden sacrificed its seniors to the pandemic and used its schoolchildren as guinea pigs. Its government plied its people with lies about COVID-19 and even tried to smear its critics.
These are features of the policies of the states that have been least successful at fighting the pandemic in the U.S., such as Florida — sacrifices borne by the most vulnerable, scientific authorities ignored or disdained, lies paraded as truth. Do we really want all of America to face the same disaster?
“A judge found Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in contempt of court Wednesday for failing to release documents related to a Republican-run review of the 2020 election,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Wednesday. “Dane County Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn determined the Rochester Republican and the Assembly as a whole adopted ‘a collective and abject disregard for the court’s order’ from four months ago to turn over documents sought by the liberal group American Oversight under the state’s open records law. She ordered Vos and the Assembly to turn over records within 14 days and to each pay $1,000 per day if they fail to do that.”
In Arizona, the Cyber Ninjas are being fined $50,000 a day.
“Bailey-Rihn in November ruled Vos and others had to release copies of emails, calendars and other documents about the election review. Vos produced some records but not others as he argued the requests should have been made to Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice he hired to oversee the election review,” the newspaper added. “Bailey-Rihn noted state law requires government officials to treat records from contractors like Gableman the same as their own records. That policy is meant to prevent officials from using contractors to evade their obligations under the open records law, she noted.”
Vos has approved spending $676,000 in taxpayer money on the Gableman investigation.
This is not a family in Ukraine. This is a picture of a family in the US trying to survive by living in a large old van. This is what some kids going to school deal with. This is why reducing free meals is so horrible. This is parents trying to work to keep their children fed and clothed yet can not afford the cost of housing in the US. In some areas rents rose by 66%. Yes that number is true. How can anyone deal with this? Why is the wealthy allowed to profit from the misery of families?
Republicans eliminate precedent all the time. SCOTUS wants to overturn decided cases like Roe v Wade. Why would the worst president of all time, who personifies obstruction of justice, benefit from precedent?
“The average citizen views today’s Supreme Court as highly politicized because we all saw what our politicians did to it. The Republican political hardball, and the brazen dishonesty that was used to justify it, Trumpified the court with three out of nine justices — one stolen from the first Black president, one rammed through just days before the 2020 election, and one with a surprise resignation. Now, no one is shocked that a court forged with such political bad faith is making bad decisions with nakedly political overtones.”
This illegitimate SCOTUS majority does not interpret laws. They abuse their power to impose their regressive, revanchist, theocratic will on a population that does not respect them, did not vote for them, and has no way at all to hold them accountable.
I don’t know how, but this has to change.
Just when you think the three new judges are the worst, Clarence makes sure you know he is horrible, too.
What the right calls sexual indoctrination is the idea that gay or trans people exist and are normal. The only parents the right wants to have a say are right wing maga parents, the rest of the parents get told to shut up. They are trying to win the culture war by making even the exposure to LGBTQ+ people illegal. Even though kids are exposed to straight couples and straight sexuality all the time. So it is not about the sexual indoctrination of kids, it is about the idea they hate anyone different from them and don’t want kids to know about them until they have been taught to hate them.
Because this is not happening! It is a lie and misinformation from those that are anti-trans or using it as a political wedge issue. Men are not suddenly deciding they are not good enough to win in a sport as a man so will up-end their lives and face unending discrimination to live their life as a woman so they can compete as a female to win. Where the fuck to start to explain how stupid this idea is. First if a guy is not good enough to win against male competitors it is doubtful that after they take the necessary treatments to qualify to play on a women team they would win there either. Second what guy who is a male gender is going to stop his entire way of life that makes him happy and start living in a way that will make life harder for him and could cost him his entire sexual enjoyment / life. How is he going to date the girls he likes if he is not the man he was but a girl like them? If he was in to men who liked men, they wont date him because he is a girl now. So he is giving up that. How about his family, are they OK with it? How about his political friends, if Republican he loses all them. This is why the idea of guys just claiming to be girls falls apart and is not happening. Think it through people. If it was a huge problem it would be happening every day in every sport, and it is not. If all the trans women were winning all the awards, setting all the records, and winning every event it would be daily news. But it isn’t because they are not. Look at the scores, look at the totality of the wins, look at the awards. Most often the trans person is working harder and has less support, and only sometimes wins. The records are still held by non trans women. It is simply bigotry. Sort of like when black people were allowed to play sport with white people. It was said white people couldn’t win anymore. Yet they do. They still play and they still win.
She declined to become entangled in verbal traps. Anything else? Yawn. The Cons. are pissed that she is much smarter than they are. The point is that her job isn’t to define things. Her job is to interpret and rule on the law when presented with evidence and arguments in court. Cases which come before the Supreme Court are not going to be simple ones. They will be cases which challenge the edges of established definitions. Asking a candidate to decide without first hearing the arguments in a particular case is basically asking them if they would like to disqualify themselves for the position.
Oh, haha, it’s totally the Fed’s fault, even though CEOs are BRAGGING about their record profits they’ve “earned” by hiking prices across the board for everything under the sun. The GQP is having a sh*tfit over gas prices. They would do the same if Biden did anything to stop Big Oil’s obscene profiteering. The same for every other issue today.
Several hundred Russian troops reportedly rushed to a special medical facility in Belarus after digging in radioactive soil in a forest near the infamous nuclear plant.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Correspondent-At-Large
SeanGallup
Several hundred Russian soldiers were forced to hastily withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after suffering “acute radiation sickness” from contaminated soil, according to Ukrainian officials.
The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency in charge of the country’s nuclear power stations, said the Russian soldiers had panicked and fled.
“It has been confirmed that the occupiers who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone set off in two columns towards Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The occupiers announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant this morning to the Ukrainian personnel of the station,” the agency said in a statement on Telegram, adding that a small number of Russians still remained at the facility.
The agency said it had also confirmed reports of Russian forces digging trenches in the Red Forest, “the most polluted in the entire exclusion zone.”
“Not surprisingly, the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first sign of illness. And it showed up very quickly.”
Local reports suggest that seven buses with the zapped troops arrived in Gomel early Thursday. Journalists on the ground have also reported “ghost buses” of dead soldiers being transported from Belarus to Russia under the cover of dark.
U.S. intelligence reported Wednesday that Russian forces began withdrawing from the defunct site. Russia said the withdrawal from Chernobyl was part of a pledge to scale back the invasion. But Ukrainian media says it is actually because the troops were “irradiated” from the contaminated soil.
“Another batch of Russian irradiated terrorists who seized the Chernobyl zone was brought to the Belarusian Radiation Medicine Center in Gomel today,” Yaroslav Yemelianenko, who works for the Public Council at the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management, posted on Facebook. “There are rules for dealing with this territory.”
The Chernobyl facility fell to Russian control on Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion. Workers were on duty for more than 600 hours before being allowed a shift change. International concern grew immediately when Russian troops moved heavy military hardware through the area, kicking up radioactive dust without any protective equipment. Forest fires in the area also raised concern about environmental contamination.
Digging trenches in the forest—considered the most contaminated area of the site—drew widespread ridicule from Ukrainians who work at the site.
As the Russian president signs a decree to call up another 134,500 conscripts, his troops in Ukraine want out.
Allison Quinn
News Editor
Reuters
Russia’s Vladimir Putin is calling up another 134,500 conscripts even as more and more of his own soldiers appear to be turning on him over humiliating losses in Ukraine.
According to a decree published on a Russian government portal Thursday, the troops will be called to begin service on April 1 until July 15. The Defense Ministry promised earlier this week that they “will not be sent to any hot spots,” and that all those called up in last spring’s draft will be sent home.
But those assurances seem likely to be overshadowed by a multitude of reports that say Russia’s senseless war against Ukraine has been marred by lies from the top down, with Russian troops claiming they were misled into the war and Putin’s own advisers said to be shielding him from the extent of the devastating losses.
Even as Putin signed the decree on Thursday, Ukraine’s Security Service released an intercepted call said to capture a Russian soldier railing against the incompetence of his own army.
“Our brigade has totally shit themselves. There are losses, many wounded,” he tells his wife.
Asked if the losses are a result of someone screwing up, he offers a blunt response: “The whole army with us is stupid morons.”
“It’s unclear why we are even here,” he says.
Another recording shared by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, captures a man identified as a Russian soldier named Maksim asking his mother what is being shown on Russian television, and if there are reports “they’re saying they will change anything.”
“Everything’s bad, almost no one among us is left. They said we will keep going until the very end, until everyone is killed,” he tells his mother.
Asked if his senior officer was still with the unit, he replies: “No, he dumped us yesterday. We’re all dead in the water if he left.”
The new recordings come just hours after Western officials said there was growing evidence of disarray and disillusionment among Russian troops, with Britain’s spy chief citing reports of troops “refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.”
It was against this backdrop that Russian defense officials claimed they would cut down hostilities around the Ukrainian capital and shift their focus instead to the east of the country—an announcement met with mockery and skepticism among Ukrainian officials, who said the Kremlin was trying to spin their numerous setbacks into a “mission accomplished” scenario.
Perhaps as part of that long game, the Kremlin has now reportedly begun implementing plans to send psychologists from the FSB into Kherson, a city in the south of Ukraine where residents continue to resist the Russian forces who took over after the Feb. 24 invasion.
“To implement a scenario for the creation of another pseudo-republic in the territory of the Kherson region, there is work underway by employees of the FSB, 652 groups of information and psychological operations and officers of the 12th Main Directorate of the [Russian] General Staff,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement Thursday.
Ukrainian officials said the FSB effort is an attempt to brainwash residents into supporting their new Russian authorities.
Russian law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges are also said to be on their way to occupied territories in Ukraine, with reports of Russian police officers being asked to take “business trips” to parts of the Donbas in Ukraine’s east.
Former President Donald Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release dirt on President Joe Biden amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview with Just the News founder John Solomon published on Tuesday, Trump reiterated his unproven claim that Yelena Baturina, a Russian oligarch and the wife of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, gave $3.5 million to a business that Hunter Biden, a son of Joe Biden, helped found.
“She gave him $3.5 million so now I would think Putin would know the answer to that,” said Trump. “I think he should release it. I think we should know that answer.”
“How is it that the mayor of Moscow, his wife gave the Biden family three and a half million dollars?” he added. “I think Putin now would be willing to probably give that answer. I’m sure he knows.”
This is not the first time Trump has called on Russia to release damaging information on a political rival. While running for president in 2016, Trump called on Moscow to release the hacked emails of then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Additionally in the interview, Trump remarked, “I’m the best thing that ever happened to NATO, because I made them pay. So NATO has plenty of money now.
“And by the way, that’s another, I’m the one who brought up Nord Stream 2 … . I’m the one that blocked it. I terminated it. They weren’t gonna have it. [Biden] then opened it.”
While Biden did waive sanctions against Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, in 2021, he implemented them last month following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly said Trump claimed Yury Luzhkov gave $3.5 billion to a business Hunter Biden helped found. The claim holds Luzhkov gave $3.5 million.
It’s “Russia if you’re listening” all over again, and essentially makes good on what he told @GStephanopoulos before the 2020 election: he’d be happy to collude with any foreign government if it’d help him win a U.S. election. pic.twitter.com/V33tWb19mC
Use tax revenues to rebuild America. Increase tax rates on the uber-wealthy for poisoning our society for decades with their greed.
Republicans and conservatives have created a world where all their crimes go unmentioned on their own media. Then those crimes are projected in their rivals.
The Republicans tried to have a gotcha moment and a sound bite for right wing media. KBJ did not give it to them as she is far smarter than they are. But her answer was true, legally what a woman is doesn’t follow what the average maga cult member thinks a woman is. For them if it has inside sex parts if is female. That is their criteria. They go on looks, it is pretty and has boobs so much be a woman. That stupidity I thought was long behind us, but the education system in the US has been hijacked to promote right wing ideology instead of reasoning and research.
The right wing wants you to think that what Biden said was a gaff. I don’t think it was. I think it was planned, and so was the statements afterwords. Biden got to put a lot of emotion, a lot of outrage into the speech exciting the world and getting people talking about what he was saying without doing any real harm. Biden gets to look tough, look morally angry at the harm to the people. He looked good, and that the right hates.
Do you ever notice that right after tRump gives an off the wall outrageous speech or sends out a crazy press release the right wing media immediately tries to portray Biden as out of touch and as a doddering old man. I think it is more right wing projection.
Putin, who sent death squads into a neighboring country to assassinate their leader whilst simultaneously invading that country without provocation, is sure having a hissy fit because someone said something to offend his fragile ego. The Republicans are getting nervous because Biden is saying some of the things that they expect a Republican to say and it may play well with part of their base.
Sweden has done better than the U.S. and Britain against COVID, but worse than many other countries that imposed stricter lockdowns and much worse than its Nordic neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland.(Johns Hopkins University via Our World in Data)
She declined to become entangled in verbal traps. Anything else? Yawn. The Cons. are pissed that she is much smarter than they are. The point is that her job isn’t to define things. Her job is to interpret and rule on the law when presented with evidence and arguments in court. Cases which come before the Supreme Court are not going to be simple ones. They will be cases which challenge the edges of established definitions. Asking a candidate to decide without first hearing the arguments in a particular case is basically asking them if they would like to disqualify themselves for the position.