How Sweden is dealing with Coronavirus: It’s not how you’d expect

By Mason Leaver

Sweden has a reputation for being somewhat different from its fellow European countries. Its environmental policies are vastly ahead of the US and even outclass some of those from Europe, its economy is consistently well-maintained and prosperous, and its crime rates are lower than many nations with similar demographics. It should not come as a surprise, then, that Sweden faced the COVID-19 Pandemic differently than many of the world’s other nations. Its approach was vastly different than expected, raising many eyebrows across Europe and beyond. Did its unorthodox approach pay off?

As of 2019, Sweden had a population of roughly 10.23 million people, spread out across about 175,000 square miles. In 2018, Sweden was reported to have a GPD of about 556 billion dollars. Its economy has experienced steady growth and improvement for the last several years. With so much to boast of and so much to lose due to the Pandemic, it’s all the more surprising that Sweden announced that they would not input any form of lockdown whatsoever to slow the spread of the Virus. Rather, Sweden elected to rely on its citizens themselves to be careful and follow distancing protocols. In a country such as the US, the extreme division between those who approve of and trust the government and those who despise it is too strong for the government to be able to trust the people to take care of themselves. Relying on the government to make calls and have your best interest is impossible in the US, as the relationship between the government and the citizens is both fraught and diverse. For everyone who approves of and trusts the Federal Government, there is someone who despises and distrusts it just as much.  

Although this strategy of letting Swedish citizens figure things out for themselves and take care of their own health without mandatory guidelines would seem ineffective, the results have been very surprising. Sweden’s rate of infection is much lower than most other European nations, and its death rate clocks in at roughly 22 out of every 100,000 people, a similar rate to the fellow European nation of Ireland. 

Ultimately, Sweden’s extremely different approach to combating the COVID-19 Pandemic has proven to be surprisingly effective. Since the government and the people have so much trust for one another, the people can be relied upon to follow the protocols of distancing and health without needing to have mandatory orders set in place by the government. Sweden’s effective method that does not utilize mandatory lockdown orders raises the question of whether or not trusting the people to take care of themselves would be effective in other European nations, and beyond. 

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