english
Sweden's Provocative Pandemic
Sweden's Provocative Pandemic Panic Plan TEXT MALAVIKA BALAKUMAR AND GREG GEORGAKIS ILLUSTRATION ROISIN CALLAGHAN
On multiple fronts, there is a huge contrast between how Sweden handled the pandemic, as compared to the rest of the world. Some aspects include the lockdown approach, as well as the limited testing policies. After interviewing a few KTH students from different countries, we confirmed how huge this difference actually is. When we asked them about Sweden’s strategy, their answers were interesting to say the least. Ojasvi Singh, a second year master student from India, felt that Sweden had many natural advantages in dealing with this type of situation, such as a low population density and solitary living. Despite acknowledging these significant positives, he decided to leave for India anyways, prompted by the fear of living in a shared corridor. In India, the government decided to lockdown all non-essential economic activity and travel relatively early, owing to the sheer amount of people in
the country. Faced with the same problem of a large population, Spain also chose to implement a lockdown, but the same level of panic was not seen immediately. Comparing Spain and Sweden, Arturo Ardao, a second year master student from Spain, felt that there was a huge difference with respect to student life. The lack of mutual trust between the students and professors in Spain, unlike in Sweden, prevented Spain’s professors from supporting a lockdown, worried that students would not be able to handle individual studies in an academically honest manner.
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Nicolas, a Greek student, thought it would be rather difficult to deal with the Corona Virus in Athens, since it is the most populous city in Europe. He was not in favor of the Swedish approach and argued that a pandemic requires decisive and quick action. On the other hand, Saga, a Swedish student was pretty satisfied with Sweden’s strategy, noting that the government trusted its people to act appropriately during challenging times. She thought that since Swedes are essentially characterized by self-responsibility, a lockdown was not essential. Discussing which approach they thought was safer in terms of public health, their opinions diverged. Arturo picked Sweden’s approach, giving many reasons to avoid a lockdown: through statistics it was clear that the cases in Spain declined during the lockdown, however, once the restrictions were eased, the cases only continued to rise, showing its inefficacy. Saga could not agree more with Arturo that what Sweden did was much more rational than a
