Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment

Sigurd Bergmann is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim; Visiting Researcher at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University; and Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center at Munich University. His research covers religion and the environment, and religion, arts and architecture, and among his multiple books and articles are Weather, Religion and Climate Change (2020), Religion, Space and the Environment (2014), In the Beginning Is the Icon (2009), and God in Context (2003). Martin Lindström is Professor of Social Medicine at the Medical Faculty, Lund University, Sweden. He holds a PhD in Social Medicine (2000) and a second PhD in Economic History (Historical Demography) (2015). Lindström is a Fellow of the Center for Economic Demography (CED) and EpiHealth, both at Lund University. His research covers social capital and health, socioeconomic differences in health, life course epidemiology and historical demography (including epidemics in the 18th and 19th centuries). Lindström has authored many international research articles and chapter contributions in edited books.

Introduction Sweden Stumbles along the Third Way 1. In the rupture between this and another world to come: introductory remarks on pandemic emergency and Sweden’s response 2.A timeline of events: December 2019 to February 2022 3. On the virology of SARS-CoV-2 and an expert authority without real experts: was there a deliberate disinformation from the Public Health Agency of Sweden on theSARS-CoV-2 infection’s spread in the population? 4.The COVID-19-pandemic and the Swedish strategy: central aspects of the strategy in relation to evidence-based medicine criteria 5.The Swedish COVID-19 response: from poorly judged utilitarianism to history revisionism and the tragedy of the commons 6.Learning from failure: mastering a pandemic in the triad of science, politics and trust 7.Epidemiology and COVID-19: why numbers are important and can be misleading 8.The political economy of estimating immunity levels 9.Children at the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic 10.The biopolitics of herd immunity 11.Collaborators, supporters, and science judges: how trust in the Public Health Agency’s messaging was achieved 12.Sweden unmasked: reading state and society through the pandemic 13. A drastic end to a long story of success in Swedish preventive medicine