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Rebel Swedes

Matt Steinglass: Europe correspondent, The Economist

The split over covid-19 will continue

THE NORDIC countries share similar political models and cultural norms. So when
covid-19 arrived in March 2020, many expected Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden
to adopt similar policies. Instead Sweden took a loose approach, keeping restaurants
and primary schools open and relying on citizens to observe social-distancing
recommendations themselves. The others enforced strict lockdowns and relaxed them
only as the epidemic receded.

That turned the Nordics into a natural experiment, testing which approach best
preserves public health while minimising economic and social damage. Depending on
the answer, you would expect that in 2021 either the Swedes would shift to their
neighbours’ approach or vice versa. Which might it be?

At first the answer seemed clear. In spring 2020 Sweden’s infection rates rose far above
its neighbours’. By mid-June its daily case rate, adjusted for population size, was ten or
more times as high as those in Denmark, Finland and Norway. By the end of July Sweden
had registered 5,729 deaths officially ascribed to covid-19. Denmark, with about half