Swedish Covid Expert Says the World Still Doesn’t Understand - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-28/sweden-s-covid-expert-says-the-world-still-doesn-t-understand
“Sweden’s approach has been widely misrepresented as doing nothing. It’s not,” [William] Hanage, [associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s School of Public Health in Boston] said. “Given a starting point in which it has been decided an outbreak is inevitable, the question becomes how to mitigate it and preserve health care, and the earlier on in the outbreak you take action to slow transmission, the less intense that action needs to be — initially.”
“Sweden’s strategy, in that sense, has been smarter than those countries’ that encouraged transmission until shutdowns became necessary,” Hanage said. “However, it has come at a great cost in terms of mortality in vulnerable groups...It also needs to be flexible and responsive; if a surge is building, you need to be able to detect it and know what you will do to avert it.”
“As for the overall outcome,” Hanage said, “time will tell.”