Sweden's Provacative Pandemic

Sweden's Provocative Pandemic Panic Plan

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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. 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

total lockdown, as was demonstrated by the flattening of the curve. On the other hand, Ojasvi and Nicolas noted feeling safer when people around them wore masks, again pointing out the high population density of both their countries.

asking about the student life, all of them agreed that Sweden had an advantage. Schools and universities here were able to quickly change to an online form of education. Arturo felt that KTH in particular was able to handle the transition quite smoothly with savvy professors capable of handling Zoom and Canvas with ease. Computer literacy still permeates through the ranks in India, condemning both students and professors to face a lot of technical issues. Looking at Spain and Greece, where technological disadvantages are not the case, even the best of universities nonetheless struggled to adapt to the sudden change.

Talking about their life post graduation, both Arturo and Ojasvi agree that Sweden can offer better job opportunities given that its no lockdown approach spared the job market of a lot of the damage suffered by other countries. Except for Sweden, many of the other countries were under lockdown for at least five months and as a result, the economy took a huge hit, reducing job opportunities for recent university graduates across the globe.

Finally, when asked about the approach they would prefer, answers differed again. Ojasvi and Nicolas, explained their common choice, both mentioning that since very little is known about the virus, they would prefer prevention over immunity. Whereas the two, picked their own country’s approach, Arturo and Saga picked Sweden’s. They felt that Sweden’s advantage of low population and solitary living habits helped greatly in proper handling of the pandemic.

all things considered, after having interviewed students who had experienced the pandemic either in Sweden or other countries, we can simply conclude that all had differences in opinion. At the end of the day, it is up to us as students and responsible adults to be aware of the situation and to be cautious. What about you? Which approach would you choose?