Thread by @karamballes

🧵The Swedish Deception

Extensive study on Sweden's covid strategy has been published in Nature. Contains extensive official documents and internal emails.

Very informative, let's take a look and compare to the UK

nature.com/articles/s4159…

2/ Sweden never officially admitted following herd immunity as a strategy, but internal docs show this was a significant consideration in policy decisions

3/ Internally Sweden saw children and schools as a way of facilitating herd immunity whole publicity claiming children didn't play a role in transmission

4/ Remember Viners April systematic review?
"Schools don't play a significant role in transmission"
We had less likely to be infected, then less likely to infect, then "community transmission" then it was no need for measures as all the kids have been infected already

5/ Viners report is still quoted in the Green Book for LA, its also quoted in some of the Swedish documents
PHEs tame paediatricians still claiming its just "community transmission"
After writing this report Viner was brought into SAGE meetings

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1428317498269700099?t=Av1eJf0rgWuXWOg6yu4_lA&s=19

6/ FOI requests regularly denied and redacted
Plan focused on "not spreading fear" they persuaded themselves not telling the truth was in the public interest

Protecting the economy prioritised

6/ Very much like the "stop living in fear" "end of lockdown anxiety" articles we were flooded with by media.

This was the same time as eat out to help out...

7/Sweden relied almost entirely on their own studies ignoring international evidence just like the UK, eg

DfE on school transmission, their masks survey, air filters. Despite large amounts of evidence DfE only looks at their own often underpowered studies, often poor methods

8/ The sentence above

"Elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies"🤯
Horrific, sounds like a lot like a cull

UK care home home scandal⬇️

https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1279700129155604482?t=7HvBtyuxXCovNIzbeeCsCQ&s=19

9/ Sweden saw keeping any measures out of schools as an important part of the strategy, withholding testing means they could deny having any evidence of transmission, however now data on longcovid and harms of losing relatives is mounting

Took ages to get testing into UK schools

10/ Unlike most other countries school attendance remained mandatory, parents were fined for keeping children off to protect CEV kids/ family

This is exactly UK policy, see @Sandyboots2020 @SafeEdForAll_UK @Parents_Utd @_f4vl @OneVoice_Group @cv_cev for many examples

11/ Swedish authorities misrepresented and manipulated the data they did have on children's role in transmission, so those using Swedish data to argue against measures in schools were using unreliable evidence

12/ Previously released internal emails show Ludvigsson and Tegnell finding an increase in child mortality and then deciding how to make this inconvenient fact go away

https://twitter.com/JoannaTeglund/status/1379169620863676421?t=xa4_yvywG3YcejbRZCmDww&s=19

13/ Lack of transparency on data

Schools not informing parents of outbreaks like UK
Outbreaks not reported, remember the UK cases vs outbreak reporting that fudged the scale of the problem particularly autumn/winter 2020

14/ Care home deaths cover up

15/ As I said earlier, lying to prevent fear and worry was considered to be for the greater good.

Thou shall not question your Government

16/ No gov evidence provided until April, like UK, lots of redactions and issues with FOI requests, hard to see how guidence was produced

17/ Hmm refusal to answer FOIs, I think Swedish journalists have now gotten a lot more information out of their government than we have in the UK

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1500470221227925521?t=fcdV94NjKWjdJzZWwlkm1g&s=19

18/

19/ In Sweden they deleted emails requested, in the UK the main deleting has been over contracts to chums, when it comes to pandemic strategy the UK just refuse

20/ In April Sweden set up a new committee that would oversee decisions in secrecy

21/ The UK did this in July
Remember the Joint Biosecurity Centre?They were apparently responsible for the chilli peppers alert levels

Costs a lot of money but we never hear about them

https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1316150822057791489?t=omc68Hehl5yjsaf43n-H9w&s=19

22/ Sweden were very selective with which experts they conferred with

Those academics who disagreed found themselves in difficult situations

Need to go pretend to be a responsible adult, will go back to do the rest of this later in the evening

23/ "Don't be alarmist"
"Fear monger"
"Lockdown lovers"

Government gaslighting in Sweden as in UK was aided by media compliance, and gov experts

Thinking schools again

24/ Critics of the government were attacked by the media

I'm thinking how @IndependentSage and @dgurdasani1 have been treated at times by media and other academics

Debate occurred via newspaper opinion pieces, like the UK

25/ Expert advice was ignored

Didn't deal with air filtration, transmission in schools or variants

26/ If you haven't read recent SAGE papers, this is exactly what the UK government is currently doing and has done since mid 2020

SAGE have been recommending ventilation and filtration in schools for over a year and a half

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1492640572192010240?t=w2XOg4DKlMDxdx2UbMiVoQ&s=19

27/ The UK has repeatedly been an outlier for similar reasons

28/ Media give a disproportionate sized platform to pro infection experts

29/ Sweden started with an influenza plan, assuming there was no way to stop the spread

A small group had a disproportionate influence on policy

30/ In August 2020 the UK government ignored SAGE after meeting with Tegnell, Heneghan, Gupta, Dingwall

No circuit breakers, they tried to keep everything open, gaslighted us, and a lot of ppl died as a result

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1500476944399446019?t=w2XOg4DKlMDxdx2UbMiVoQ&s=19

31/ Full strategy developed behind closed doors, never properly communicated to the public, Sweden continue with misleading information, talking points not followed up with action

"Doing all we can to..."

32/ The report has a certain repetitiveness regarding asymptomatic spread,masks,and schools
Also they downplayed scale of spread repeatedly while claiming herd immunity was close,which surely requires lots of infections?🤷‍♂️

UK has had Freedom day and living with the virus day now

33/ How many press briefings have we seen in the UK where we couldn’t get straight answers, when the advisors diplomatically talked around the facts

34/ Lack of meaningful political opposition means that citizens cannot change the pandemic strategy through their voting choices at the next election

Wake up @LabourParty!

35/ Intentional misinformation facilitated the spread of the virus, refusal to make changes to the influenza plan despite the evidence

36/ Authorities didn't trust the Public enough to be straight with the public

Recommendations makes legal protections more difficult

37/ Consequence of letting it rip was increased inequality of social justice

38/ Sweden knew about the inequality, they blamed foreigners

How many UK pundits have been overly focused on weight in regards to covid?

39/ In Sweden people were expected to take personal responsibility for their own risk, ignoring asymptomatic cases, if vulnerable ppl get sick its likely their fault

Bit like current UK thinking offering LFTs just to the vulnerable

40/ Essentially the Swedish strategy is one which accommodates middle/upper class

41/ That's the report, now a few extra considerations

Mid March Tegnell and UK were trying to persuade others to adopt herd immunity

From Italian ministers⬇️

42/ There is a pre pandemic link with Tegnell and Giesecke to the UK, both studies at London school of tropical medicine, Whitty was also there

https://twitter.com/DavidSteadson/status/1247645447889485824?t=OCtqts3zTROslfSrZ-5mpA&s=19

43/ UK was also in talks with Netherlands about Herd immunity in mid March

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1492224952682131458?t=OCtqts3zTROslfSrZ-5mpA&s=19

44/ Once again the parallels with Netherlands and Sweden and UK are clear to see

Here's a thread like mine from a Dutch perspective

https://twitter.com/finhstamsterdam/status/1507263805759361025?t=OCtqts3zTROslfSrZ-5mpA&s=19

45/ Whilst writing I'm seeing this is being retweeted in lots of different countries

Policy convergence, particularly in Western world isn't coincidence, I've been tracking jt throughout the pandemic

A brief look at other countries⬇️

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1487771423380840452?t=OCtqts3zTROslfSrZ-5mpA&s=19

46/ Schools are the key to a herd immunity strategy, this is why so much effort has been to keep mitigations out

Long thread of threads looking at all policy choices on schools throughout the pandemic pandemic

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1502311946732851212?t=ZxyfTtmuLn_yFXbwomuOtw&s=19

47/ Previously sensible counries appearing to go mad at the moment is the produce ofa year year disinformation campaign

A very long look at the network of overlapping interests⬇️

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1432482157101035522?t=ZxyfTtmuLn_yFXbwomuOtw&s=19

48/ I would like to see more comparison threads like this for other countries, I'll compile them into threads to add to my pinned tweet, been working on the international perspective

Also, if you haven't already the JCVI minutes are interesting

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1454235882400145414?t=6XX6BXFuyFUb4opR33WEFw&s=19

49/ This is what living with it is starting to look like in the UK, overflow tents in hospital car parks, although this isn't getting media attention

The management notes on language feels very Swedish

https://twitter.com/Jamesillman/status/1507280455296507905?t=0DnVSYjRakjwvCBDz5Ai_Q&s=19