Events

Sweden Refuses To Impose A Lockdown, 10% Population Already Infected According To Stockholm University

While most of Europe and USA is under lockdown – there is one country in Europe that refuses to enforce any kind of lockdown.

There are restaurants and bars still open here, so are the playgrounds and schools. While the Government has shifted the responsibility towards the citizens, the popular opinion in Sweden is that “herd immunity” will protect them in the long run.

Schools, playgrounds, restaurants – everything is open in Sweden

Image Credit: CNBC

While countries like Spain and France imposed a lockdown all over the nation as soon as they realized the grave nature of the problem – Swedish plan is still about encouraging people to stay home, rather than actually making a declaration of lockdown.

Even by the end of March, the official stand of the Swedish government was to ask people to “not crowd” the places like restaurants, schools etc.

So naturally, all the public places in Sweden were kept open and even meetings of up to 50 people were allowed.

While most people have reduced going out and travelling, there is still a large number of people who are throwing Easter parties, and going out for casual errands and dates. A Swedish doctor exclaimed:

“Where I live people are working from home, but they go to local restaurants, local cafés and they mix up old people and young people from schools and universities. That is not social distancing.”

Trump calls it a disaster, says Sweden is suffering badly

Image Credit: ABC News

US President Donald Trump has commented on Sweden’s policy where they have enforced no ban at all, and told people to do social distancing and self-quarantine on their own. Trump has commented about Sweden on various occasions, at one time he even said:

“The herd, they call it the herd. Sweden’s suffering very, very badly.”

What is herd immunity? Is Sweden really trying to have herd immunity?

Image Credit: The Atlantic

Herd immunity is when an entire community becomes immune to the virus and its deadly effects. But this immunity comes at a great cost which cannot be justified in a rational society.

Theoretically, when a majority of people or perhaps all of them are exposed to the virus, everyone catches the infection, and some people die. Those who survive have an immunity against the virus which then gets transferred to the next generation, making the entire community or “herd” immune.

Ann Linde, the Foreign Minister of Sweden has said that Trump is “factually wrong”, and Sweden isn’t actually aiming for the “herd immunity.”

While everyone is still exposed, they are protecting the elderly

Image Credit: Government.se

After the Government pushed the responsibility of handling COVID-19 on the citizens, Swedish scientist Anders Tegnell has claimed:

“I think Sweden is doing okay. It’s producing quality results the same way it’s always done. So far Swedish health care is handling this pandemic in a fantastic way.”

Perhaps the only agreeable thing about the Swedish plan is that people older than 70 have been asked to stay home and practice social distancing as much as they can. But this plan had a severe flaw – while the elderly were advised to stay inside homes, younger people were not forbidden to visit the elderly. Which leaves the younger people to openly go out and possibly contract an infection which can be spread to the elderly in their homes or through common objects of usage.

A Swedish official said:

“Many people are upset about the fact that no ban on visiting homes for elderly was set until recently [April 1], and now the virus is widely spread among these homes, causing the death toll to rise.”

Sweden has seen a 200% rise within a week

Sweden has had a sharp rise in the number of infections as the month of April started, and now the total number of cases have mounted up to 10,439 with a death toll of 899 – both of which have increased by 200% within just one week.

Analysts have studied how the cases are increasing in several countries in Europe – and it has been found that the rate of increase is highest in Sweden as compared to the countries which actually have imposed a lockdown.

10% Swedes are already infected

Image Credit: Herald

According to a study by Imperial College, London – 3.1% of the Swedish people were infected by March 28th, while the official data only reported 3,326 cases. Compare this data with Norway where only 0.41% people estimated to be infected, and UK where 2.5% of the population is infected.

Even the data for number of deaths per million population is nearly 350% higher in Sweden than Norway.

Since Sweden still refuses to impose a lockdown, 40% of the Swedish capital’s population will catch the COVID-19 by the end of this month – according to Tom Britton, who is a mathematical statistics professor at Stockholm University. He even said in an interview to CNN that at least 10% of the Swedes are already infected.

 

 

 

Featured Image Courtesy: France24

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