Tegnell has been wrong about almost everything. Hard to see for me why that level of incompetence deserves respect. But he seems to have a lot of charisma so many people mistake that for brilliance.
In one Swedish podcast, he was described with the analogy of a “manipulating boyfriend”. Quite fitting.
Sweden has one of the highest death rates in the EU. So they were wrong about their strategy.
They are also basing their strategy on the belief that getting the disease grants immunity, which, according to WHO, there is currently no evidence of.
Perhaps saying that they were "wrong about almost everything" is an exaggeration, but they were certainly wrong about a few very important things.
>Sweden has one of the highest death rates in the EU. So they were wrong about their strategy.
There strategy is focused on the long-term. Obviously allowing a higher infection rate is going to lead to more deaths initially, but their argument is that eventually everybody everywhere else will be infected (it will keep coming back), in which case the death toll over the long run is the same.
>They are also basing their strategy on the belief that getting the disease grants immunity, which, according to WHO, there is currently no evidence of.
There's no direct evidence of but it's still incredibly unlikely it's not the case, given what we know of how all similar viruses behave.
> Sweden has one of the highest death rates in the EU. So they were wrong about their strategy.
Of course not having full lockdowns will give a higher Covid death rate (at least initially) than lockdowns.
If you measure that data point and use it to determine "success" then you are saying that a strategy known to be a failure was chosen, and it failed...
> the belief that getting the disease grants immunity, which, according to WHO, there is currently no evidence of.
That was a poor wording from the WHO. The reality is that scientists were always so sure that clearing an infection gives some (at least short term) immunity that it was never in question. It still isn't in question. Any policy can easily take that into consideration.
What was (and still is) questioned is how long this immunity works, and how strong the immunity is for those with no or very mild symptoms. Luckily, signs are saying that even that looks positive.
I was specifically referring to Tegnell. I seriously am under the impression that he got almost everything wrong. I personally don't see anything he got right as an expert epidemiologist shaping the country's policy.
Tegnell seriously believed it would be possible to have the virus spread through Sweden's healthy population, having them build up herd immunity, while not infecting those in risk groups, and ending up with a very low number of fatalities while keeping everything else running.
This man has zero ability for system's thinking and intelligent forecasting. I'm not sure if this is something one would need as a epidemiologist working with virus research. But one surely needs it if one is the leading figure shaping a country's complex response to a new virus.
Thanks for the addition regarding immunity, I forgot that one. Will take myself the freedom to add this to the list.
Tegnell predicted that though, actually he thought it would be much higher, between 8k and 20k. The numbers we are seeing now are much better than he initially thought.
> Uppskattningen att mellan 8 000 och 20 000 svenskar kan komma att dö av coronaviruset är inte helt orimlig.
He has been wrong, partly wrong or ignorant about:
- Foreseeing the possibility of local transmission in Europe during the early stages despite first cases popping up in Italy (when many informed, interested lay people understood that this will happen with high probability).
- Not recommended any measures to prevent thousands of travelers returning form Italy, Austria and the US from spreading the virus in Sweden in early March.
- Claimed that there won't be any risk for widespread spread in Sweden.
- Over and over again made claims that "the peak of transmission has been reached" once it started in Sweden during March/April - every time incorrect.
- Underestimated the fatality rate (by being overly optimistic and by a assuming that most infected with the virus won't show any symptoms - a totally baseless assumption).
- (Ironically) denied the existence/significance of asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission (he's still not admitting that it plays a significant role).
- Not foreseen that asymptomatic/asymptomatic transmission will, through workers, bring the virus into elderly care.
- Made multiple, way too optimistic claims about when Stockholm might have reached herd immunity (May, June) - in reality, it's far far away.
- Making assumptions about effective, lasting immunity without the existence of any actual evidence for it (thanks
tsimionescu for the addition).
- Ignored/denied the potential of wide-spread usage of masks to reduce transmission (instead, only focusing on its disadvantages "False security", "people not using them correctly")
- Claimed that children don't spread the virus in significant ways (as far as I know, there is no consensus about that).
This is just an excerpt. I'm an armchair epidemiologist (however one who has monitored this situation closely since February), so I am not stating that I got everything from the list above perfectly right. But I am informed enough to understand that he has been mostly wrong, ignorant, or unwilling to take in new information. Which makes me wonder: Why outsource everything to an "expert organization" when they perform so incompetently.
I have no time now to present you with sources for each of the things from this list. You can either do that yourself, conveniently assume that I'm making all this up (which I don't), or present me with anything he did/claimed which actually turned out to be correct. It's harder to find that, than to find things he was wrong about.
Personally I also think he lacks Charisma. But judging from how large parts of the Swedish population at least until recently loved him, some even got themselves tattoos, he clearly seem to have something which captivates the broad masses.
> - Ignored/denied the potential of wide-spread usage of masks to reduce transmission (instead, only focusing on its disadvantages)
This one personally I couldn't and still can't understand. People saw since at least late April - early May that there was a strong correlation between the use of masks and the number of new cases going down (most visible for me in countries like Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, maybe there were others, too), by that point there was almost no downside asking everyone to wear a mask (at least indoors), so, again, I can't understand why some informed people were against it.
An in addition to that, in his Hardtalk interview, at the end he said "In Sweden we don't wear masks, we stay at home if we feel sick", so implicitly he is completely sure that there is no asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 and that all residents in Sweden stay at home if they feel sick (and I would guess... also allergic people that might sneeze).
(Edit: I agree with some of these, just not all - I come across as dismissive below just because I responded to only those I disagree with...)
> Claimed that there won't be any risk for widespread spread in Sweden.
This is incorrect. That was a momentary assessment "right now we don't see that risk". That obviously never meant "We can't see that this will ever happen".
> Over and over again made claims that "the peak of transmission has been reached" once it started in Sweden during March/April - every time incorrect.
When was the first time this happened? I think what people found weird was that cases and deaths kept going up afterwards. But that doesn't mean the peak of transmission hasn't happened. The peak of hospitalizations/deaths etc was Apr 24 or thereabout, that means peak of transmission was a couple of weeks before that. When did he first say it?
> (Ironically) denied the existence/significance of asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission (he's still not admitting that it plays a significant role).
He's arguing that there is still no clear evidence it is. I'm going to give him a pass on that. You might argue that one should act as though it might be because we don't know so better safe than sorry - and I'd agree with that too.
> Made multiple, way too optimistic claims about when Stockholm might have reached herd immunity (May, June) - in reality, it's far far away.
I also found these confusing. But perhaps he looks at different numbers such as the bend in various curves rather than serological numbers (in that case he's very bad att communicating clearly what he means). I'm still optimistic that actual immunity can be much higher than serological tests show, because people turn out to have innate immunity /immunity that isn't IgG/IgA. But yes - he shouldn't be so optimistic in public I think.
> - Claimed that children don't spread the virus in significant ways (as far as I know, there is no consensus about that).
Again, if you look at it as "Don't take any action based on anything that isn't scientifically clear" rather than "Assume worst case and act accordingly".
What's becoming clear is that the FHM is extremely afraid of the consequences of mitigations (lockdowns, school closing) on public health. Example: if you count a semester lost at school as 6 months life lost - then you can start to make the numbers add up. I don't know exactly how they value things - but I trust they know what they are doing. Essentially I think that the FHM assign a high value to parameters such as personal freedom, domestic abuse, mental health, future healthcare budget... and a rather low value, to the value of a year of life for people 75 and over. This sounds ethically cynical (especially in e.g. a Catholic worldview). To me it's absolutely natural to set up these equations and balance deaths vs. other things (Not just "the economy" but "public health" in general, including the wellbeing of school children etc).
"When was the first time this happened? "
March 5th
" Det finns anledning att tro att ökningen av antalet svenska fall har nått sin kulmen, säger Folkhälsomyndighetens statsepidemiolog Anders Tegnell till DN. "
https://omni.se/tegnell-om-virusfallen-jag-tror-att-det-vars...
So on March 5, he believed that Sweden had reached the peak of infections. As if Wuhan, Italy - and at that point a bunch of other countries that were seeing rapid early infection - never happened. To me, just astonishing.
"You might argue that one should act as though it might be because we don't know so better safe than sorry - and I'd agree with that too."
Indeed. I remember taking a flight on March 1 and being on high alert and pretty nervous, because already at that point, I had been reading in non-Swedish media about indications regarding asymptomatic transmission, and I was assuming that local transmission in Europe already was ongoing in various countries. While I didn't catch the virus, in hindsight, it clearly was a correct assumption. I early on internalized that instead of relying on advice from Tegnell and his health agency, I had to rely on my own understanding/sense-making, information consumption, on foreign experts and common sense.
"I don't know exactly how they value things - but I trust they know what they are doing. "
For me, it's the opposite: Absolutely zero trust.
And I had not even an opinion about him and his agency before Corona (I didn't even know of him). So this is not the result of a long-standing mistrust of Swedish authorities. This is the first time I am so strongly feeling a total lack of trust.
Wow yeas Mar 5th was probably around a month before it actually peaked, at least. Now, I don't know what data that statement was based on, it's possible that the days leading up to that really showed it - but in that case I don't think they were clear enough in saying a few days later that "nope, no it's not going down it's clearly still up".
I don't doubt that they are professionals but they are lousy communicators that somehow believe that sounding positive doesn't make them sound incompetent eventually. Sounding pessimistic and then positively surprised would be equally bad (scientifically) but would have much better optics!
3 days later Tegnell (March 8) said he had been "a bit too optimistic" (something he stated a couple of more times since then) and that the increase "might go on for a few more days".
Personally I don't buy this being mostly a communication issue. I see this as an actual inability in intelligent, complex, system's thinking. In his brain, there is no large "simulation" of a global pandemic. There is a very small perspective, focusing only on Sweden, and only on the here and now, and the evidence that already has been produced. With this, one is doomed to be always behind, to ignore a lot of valuable knowledge, always being "too optimistic", and accumulating fatalities along the way.
Obviously, his team doesn't seem to have contributed with a lot more either (or they have been ignored by him, who knows how the internal dynamics are)
He might be a scientist. But there are good scientists. And there are bad ones. Right?
