Toll of 7400 shows failure of ‘herd immunity’

• Published date: 12 December 2020
• Date: 12 December 2020
• Publication title: Weekend Herald

Known as the Festival of Lights, it is marked by homes decorated with tulips alongside red or white amaryllis.

We dress our Christmas trees with colourful trinkets, candles, Swedish flags, tasselled caps and straw ornaments. It is an incredibly magical time of year.

This Christmas, however, will be very different.

Why? Because Sweden’s response to Covid, once hailed by some as progressive and dynamic, has now been exposed as a total failure.

This week Sweden hit the morbid milestone of more than 7400 Covid deaths.

This is despite repeated assurances from Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, that his strategy of letting the virus spread was right, and the country was unlikely to experience a severe second wave.

He was wrong.

Worse, he has been forced to admit the death toll is going to continue to climb and the country should prepare for deaths to far exceed the worst-case scenario his Public Health Agency had planned for.

The problem is that, unlike most countries, Sweden never locked down to curb the virus’ spread.

The Swedish strategy didn’t advocate using facemasks and only outlined recommendations rather than restrictions.

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