The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavirus strategy
I live in Stockholm, Sweden, so while I acknowledge my bias I&#x27;d bet my money on the fact that other countries will change their approach rather than Sweden starting to follow others.<p>While there are some undeniable social (think multiple generations in a household), geographical and cultural (swedes are notorious in keeping their distance from other swedes) differences at play here, other European countries have gone for a &quot;people can&#x27;t be trusted so we must restrict individual freedom&quot;. While there is certainly some good reasons to think that this will work the means used to implement this have some really sad consequences. Look at France, people are getting fined and in some cases brutalized; protests are sparking in places where strict measures have been implemented, not because they are unfair but because they affect people unfairly! Easy for well-off people to &quot;leave early, far and for a long time&quot; but far from everyone has that luxury (oh if you understand French, check out Twitter on the &quot;lockdown diaries&quot; parodies and compare that to how people in the suburbs of Paris are being treated!). This is without even starting to talk about how the economic impacts will be spread amongst social classes. To me Sweden has chosen the most socially (in this case as opposed to morally) fair route to handle this crisis.<p>That being said, it&#x27;s morally very difficult to defend this strategy in the face of a higher death toll amongst seniors in care homes. I cannot come up with a single argument that I don&#x27;t know will get shot down immediately and that is a good sign that it&#x27;s probably not morally optimal. We live in a time of humanism and human life comes first, rightly so but even with that said, it shouldn&#x27;t hide the picture and justify every consequence out there. The approaches in many countries are incredibly reactive and short sighted in that regard.