This is a really interesting paper by @SandraSimonsenX on Swedish exceptionalism and the stigmatisation of criticism of the pandemic response.

A short thread with some highlights. 1/
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rh… The study examines how the pandemic response itself came to embody national group identity—and thus any criticism of the pandemic response came to be seen as an attack on the group. 2/

In the latest issue of @Flamman_ Markus and I have a piece reflecting on how the Swedish Left ended up embracing a pandemic strategy rooted in neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility in the face of collective crisis.

A thread with some translated excerpts. 1/

https://twitter.com/Flamman_/status/1669996865591361539

'The international radical right has repeatedly praised the Swedish handling of the pandemic. Brazil's hard-line ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump's former medical adviser Scott Atlas and... Republican governor Ron DeSantis said to Aftonbladet: "You should be proud."' 2/

This is yet another dark chapter in the Swedish covid epic.

Early in the pandemic the virologist Åke Lundkvist gave leftover antibody tests to people he knew and came to the correct conclusion that the authorities were vastly overestimating spread. 1/

https://twitter.com/GoteborgsPosten/status/1669236107064614912

He publicised this knowledge and joined other prominent scientists in a critical intervention attempting to get the authorities to implement infection control.

The act of criticising the authorities made them pariahs and Åke was reported for violating research ethics. 2/

I just want to thank Paul for illustrating my point in the original thread 👍

He can torture excess mortality data all he wants, it doesn't change the basic fact that the Swedish pandemic strategy resulted in a lot of unnecessary death and long-term illness. 1/

https://twitter.com/dobssi/status/1655931301462147074

If we strip this all down to his core argument, Paul is trying to convince us that more pre-vax covid infection did not—in fact—result in more death and illness. Somehow Sweden came out on top despite not implementing basic infection control.

It's obviously nonsensical. 2/

The defence of the Swedish pandemic response is mainly based on distorted country comparisons of excess mortality.

But we don't need to compare Sweden to know that the strategy was based on erroneous assumptions—never corrected—resulting in unnecessary death and suffering. 1/ Tegnell et al. severely underestimated the fatality rate and assumed widespread population immunity would be achieved before vaccines.

They thought low cases in the summer meant immunity, believed there would be no 2nd wave, and thus didn't prepare.

This is all undeniable. 2/

Since we are once again submerged in Swedish pandemic historical revisionism, here's a thread of things that should have been major scandals but were brushed under the carpet.

1st: Tegnell and high-level officials tried to circumvent WHO hiring procedures to get Tegnell a job 1/ In March 2022 the FHM declared in a press release that Tegnell was leaving for a new 'top job' at the WHO.

This was false, and further digging revealed that there had been a high-level campaign to pressure the WHO into taking him. They refused. 2/
svd.se/a/28z1bq/svd-g…

Covid nihilists generally frame their objection to basic infection control in the language of 'trade-offs', suggesting that attempts to suppress viral spread have been more harmful than mass infection.

However, I have never seen them explain how they assess these trade-offs. 1/ The determination that a certain form of infection control (e.g. temporary school closures) is more harmful than the spread it reduces is always vague and/or speculative.

In these discussions of 'trade-offs' the harm caused by the virus is either absent or reductive. 2/

During the pandemic, personality cults have formed around the people charged with formulating our covid strategies and Sweden is one of the most 'interesting' examples of this.

Here's a 🧵 with some of the the more intense manifestations of the aesthetics of Tegnell worship. Oh look! Tegnell won an award for being 'unshakable' (i.e. unwilling to adapt to new information). Congrats! Also in this issue of the magazine, an article on how not to panic... 🙃