Spanish flu helped create Sweden's modern welfare state
&gt; The 1918 pandemic ravaged the remote city of Östersund. But its legacy is a city – and country – well-equipped to deal with 21st century challenges<p>Had they written this 30 years ago this would certainly have been true, Sweden as a nation had heeded Baden Powell&#x27;s motto &quot;Be Prepared&quot;. A large part of this preparation was realised through the unusual but effective way the country had organised its defence which was integrated into most parts of society. The system was called &#x27;Totalförsvaret&#x27; (literally &#x27;the total defence&#x27;) and integrated armed forces, civilian institutions and parts of industry into an organisational structure which was designed to be resistant against the loss of one or more of its arms. There were large stockpiles of material and supplies scattered around the country, these included amongst other 50 mobile field hospitals with 2100 respirators, fully equipped operating theatres, etc. The country had stockpiled food supplies which could last for a maximum of 2 years.<p>But... nearly all of this was disbanded, given away, thrown away, sold off or demolished in the years after the demise of the Soviet Union. The field hospitals went to the Baltic states, the respirators (new, unused) were given away or thrashed. The food supplies are gone, Sweden has gone from 2 years of supplies to about 16 days, i.e. whatever is in the distributor&#x27;s warehouses and on the road at the moment.<p>Before the 90&#x27;s Sweden had access to about 3600 respirators, now the number seems to be around 520 - seems to be because the &quot;government&quot; has decided this number is critical to the nation&#x27;s security and as such is not published. The country has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the OECD after Portugal.<p>Maybe SARS2 will help to rebuild this part of the Swedish state? Time will tell.