While the British left has criticized the UK’s erratic handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Swedish left has backed a national response that has led to death, ill health, and ruin among many of the country’s most vulnerable groups. Breaching its own values, it has made itself complicit in the managerial incompetence and moral bankruptcy of the Swedish pandemic response. This has left a stain on it that may take many years to remove.
I am writing this in my three-bedroom flat in a town in central Sweden that I have not left since March. As a lecturer at a university in Stockholm, I can do all of my work remotely: my teaching, my research, and my administrative tasks. If I wanted to, I could also secure all my food and essentials online. Yet I am under no obligation to remain cloistered in my home. Under Sweden’s lax pandemic restrictions, during the past five months I have been free to go and come as I please, jogging in my neighbourhood, riding my bike along the lakeside, and, had I so wished, visiting cafés, restaurants, pubs and gyms.
Sweden’s pandemic strategy appears to be designed for people like me: relatively young (I am 35) and healthy members of Sweden’s large middle class who do not use public transport to get to work. It is based around a number of public health recommendations: work remotely if you can, stay at home if you show symptoms, wash your hands regularly, self-isolate if you are sick.
