covid-19 – Pike & Hurricane

International Women’s Day 2021 & Sweden’s “Shadow Pandemic” – Amnesty International Malmö Student Group

Elena Wasserzier and Maike Hansen — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 09:44:26 +0000

“The virus we don’t talk about – Sweden’s Shadow Pandemic”

Throughout the last fourteen months you have heard about, read, and seen news and content addressing the global Covid-19 pandemic. In reference to March 2021, the month of celebrating Women’s history and International Women’s Day – we will take the opportunity to talk about another public health issue that deserves our attention.

According to the United Nations, we have witnessed a sharp increase of violence against women and girls on a global scale, since the pandemic has started. Due to drastic lockdown measures and restrictions, people were forced to stay at home, some locked in with violent abusers and unable to access support structures. Levels of domestic violence have a tendency to spike when households experience pressure related to insecurities in financial, security and health domains in addition to living conditions that do not allow for enough personal space. This pandemic, currently taking place behind closed doors, was termed ‘shadow pandemic’ by the UN in 2020.

Although most Covid-19 measures were voluntary in Sweden, the pandemic has left its mark. The Google Mobility report shows that people increasingly stayed at and worked from home, while visiting recreational areas less. The unemployment rate also augmented significantly.

So how has the shadow pandemic manifested itself in Sweden? To get more information about this we have talked to Karin Sandell, the head of information at the National Centre for Knowledge on Men’s Violence Against Women (NCK). NCK is a government-commissioned research institution in charge of Kvinnofridslinjen, the Swedish national helpline for women affected by physical, psychological, and sexual violence.

The NCK was able to give us an overview of their recent monitoring and observations in regard to the shadow pandemic in Sweden. Surprisingly, the national helpline did not experience a significant increase of calls since March 2020: “We were prepared that the calls could rise, because of an increase of violence, but we were also prepared that the number of calls might go down because it is more difficult to call when you are at home with a [violent] man. So we were prepared that it could go both ways – and it did neither. It stayed the same throughout the year.” While some women shelters experienced an increase other shelters did not, leading to the concern that women might be prohibited from seeking support in the shelters. However, no supporting data is available yet.

Although there is no concrete evidence at this point that violence against women has elevated, NCK assumes that there is in fact an increase: “We do not have the facts and figures to say exactly how it has affected the women. But what we know from the calls is that there is a big need for help.” NCK is currently waiting for accurate statistics from the criminal statistics bureau. What the statistics will not show however, are the dark figures: “most women do not seek help, they do not tell anyone. They don’t go to the police and they don’t call Kvinnofridslinjen or any other helpline either, so it is so difficult to know for sure how it has been.”

Due to isolation, many women are likely inhibited to reach out, when living at home with a violent partner. NCK assumes that more women will call the helpline to seek support once the pandemic has passed, as similar tendencies were monitored after regular holidays: “Many women wait until the isolation is over. For example, we see after holidays; after Christmas, after Easter breaks, we often have more calls. Because often you can stand it for some time but then when you are back at work and everyday life it is easier to seek help again. So that is what we expect – when life goes back to more normal, we expect to see a rise in the need for help, that more women will seek help.“

Sandell further emphasized that violence against women is an urgent issue in Sweden, with or without the pandemic. Sweden is notoriously perceived and advertised as a role model of gender equality globally, but much work remains to be done. According to Sweden’s public health agency, almost every second woman (42 percent) in Sweden has experienced sexual harassment and more than every third woman (39 percent) has been subjected to sexual assault. In both cases/in the later case, LGBTQ+ persons tend to be more victimized than the general population.

“We have seen a change in attitude, especially since 2017, and the #Metoo movement was very important in Sweden, to open eyes that even though we have achieved a lot of gender equality, we still have a big problem with the violence that is widespread. It has changed the attitude, it is much more common now, and I think that is an important reason why we have more calls to Kvinnofridslinjen “ says Sandell.

NCK has witnessed a steady increase in calls since 2017, reaching a total of 46,000 calls in 2020. Although the awareness within the population is growing, the Council of Europe formulated a report in 2019, sharply criticising aspects of Sweden’s work against gender-based and domestic violence. These include the “insufficient resources for the investigation and prosecution of such crimes”, as well as the circumstance that “particularly women from national minorities, such as Sami and Roma, migrant women, and women with disabilities face difficulties in finding support and protection from such violence”.

Especially in a county like Sweden, regarded as a paragon of gender equality, it is important to remember that the reality of gender inequality affects, harms, and kills millions of women and gender minorities around the world on a daily basis. We need to pay attention to the manifestations of inequality that are still taking place – by treating every crisis with the required urgency- and strengthen the protection of women’s and LGBTQ+ persons’ rights.

So what can be done in order to help women in violent relationships and to offer support? In that regard, Sandell had several things to say. She urged that it is important to break and avoid isolation by keeping close contact with friends and colleagues. Moreover, to always ask questions about violence in healthcare and social services. But not only in the worksphere, also within friendships, questions about violence should not be stigmatized but rather be posed to remove shame around the topic.

Sandell mentioned that NCK´s webcourse developed with the National Board of Health, has received an enhancement in the last year and many more professionals (e.g. police) were engaging in the content and the education. The media has also played a huge role in spreading awareness about the shadow pandemic in news and magazines. Sandell encourages individuals to educate themselves and spread the knowledge: “Knowledge is the key to battle violence”.

In case you, a friend, colleague, relative, or acquaintance are experiencing violence at home, please call Kvinnofridslinjen, the national helpline of NCK and talk to someone: 020-50 50 50 (only available in Sweden, (however, the language of conduct can be English as well) free of charge and available 24h per day)

Related articles:

White feminists: the dark side of Western feminism

Women’s march: feminism from below smashing the patriarchy

The Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy or: The Comeback of the “Ättestupa”

Picture credits:

From the 2021 International Women’s Day march in Melbourne. Matt Hrkac from Geelong Melbourne, Australia (CC BY 2.0)

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Rights Won’t Cure a Pandemic

Maya Diekmann — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:55:56 +0000

In recent months, human rights have experienced a rapid proliferation in public discourse. People are unusually concerned with the status of their fundamental rights—for a good reason. Few liberal democracies have witnessed such heavy-handed state intervention and liberty rights restrictions as in 2020.

Lockdowns infringe on the right to freedom of movement, strict distancing measures and gathering regulations on the freedom of assembly. Religious service is limited, hymns of praise are a big no-no in virus containment—restricting free religious practice. Not even the right to choose one’s employment is guaranteed where restaurants, theaters, and other non-essential businesses are forced to shut down.

As much as these restrictions might feel like a dictatorial rule to those privileged enough to have grown up in a liberal democratic society—who have not the slightest of ideas of what such implications even mean—it couldn’t be further removed from rights and freedoms as they work in practice. As much as some might want to equivocate their rights with a kind of untouchable, inviolable decree—human rights were never meant to play that role in the first place.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”

“…born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Or so the fairy tale is told, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Granting humans rights merely on the basis of their existence as a human being is a fundamental underpinning of the Declaration. It is an ideal worth striving for but in practice, it could not be more problematic. It is no surprise that critical opposition to the notion of universality of human rights did not take long to arise after the Declaration first entered into force. With her essay The Rights of Man: What Are They?, Hannah Arendt launched what would become one of the most prominent critiques against the supposedly inalienable status of human rights. At the core of her critique is the critical question of how human rights are supposed to be universal, if their enforcement is conditional on the existence, willingness, and capability of the institutions of sovereign states to do so.

In short, and without granting Arendt the attention that she deserves, the answer to said question is: They are not universal. Not simply by virtue of existing. The respect and protection of human rights directly depend on citizenship and institutions, because rights—just like people—do not exist in a socio-political vacuum. They exist in a world divided into a map of sovereign states, holding societies to which people are assigned by birth. If one is lucky enough to be born into a state where democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights governs, one, along with everyone else born in that state, has fundamental rights.

Being a citizen of a liberal democracy is principally like being a member of an exclusive club. You pay your membership, vote for your board, and avoid violating club rules. In return you reap the benefits of being a member. As do others. This is essential to keep the club running. The problem with membership, and its connected perks and duties, is that there is a risk to forget about the conditions on which this whole association is founded in the first place: To gather together with a common purpose. In the case of liberal democratic societies this is to live together, peacefully under the law, and to equally profit from the fruits of human cooperation—including the guarantee of certain fundamental rights.

It doesn’t take much calculating to figure out that in a society where all the members lay claims to their rights, there is bound to be some conflict sooner or later. You cannot have every single member of society demanding their freedom without any external interference. The current pandemic is paradigmatic of this: Were the COVID-19 “freedom fighters” to have their way, and states were to lift all kinds of restrictions, they would infringe on the rights to life and good health—enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR and Article 12 of the ICESCR respectively—of other members of society. This is why the freedoms set forward in international human rights documents are usually understood as liberties. And although the terms are often used interchangeably, there exists a conceptual difference: While freedom denotes the ability to do whatever one wishes without interference, the latter refers to the ability to do something without arbitrary interference. Liberties are what is granted, guaranteed, and protected by national laws.

COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest in Vancouver, May 3rd 2020

Of Lives and Livelihoods

Few human rights are absolute. Among them are the prohibition of slavery and torture. This means that these rights can never be “put on hold”. Not in war, where allegedly anything goes, not ever. Most articles in the International Bill of Human Rights, however, come with limitations. This means that in cases of national emergency, where public order or public health are threatened, these rights can be derogated from. As long as measures are based in law, are necessary and proportional to the threat, it is perfectly legitimate for a state to limit rights, such as freedom of assembly or freedom of movement.

For many in the “corona-resistance” movement, these measures are neither necessary nor proportionate. Falsely claiming SARS-CoV-2 to be little more than a flu virus, which poses no serious threat to a vast majority of the population, they demand an end of the tyranny that restricts their personal freedoms and threatens their livelihoods. And while it is correct that in most cases, a COVID-19 infection takes a mild course, it is equally correct that there is a certain part of the population which is much more likely to be seriously affected by the disease. But even to those that acknowledge this fact, the equation still seems straightforward: The lives of the few do not justify risking the livelihoods of the many.

One of the great features of human rights is that they protect minorities from the will of the majority. Just because those facing a serious risk from SARS-CoV-2 are outnumbered does not mean that they do not deserve a healthy and safe life. This is part of what characterizes the liberal democratic society that so strongly protects exactly those fundamental rights that some understand as their personal trump card in the current crisis. Those same rights are designed to work as a protective shield for all the others whose lives and health endangered are endangered.

It is easy to demand something that unlikely affects oneself negatively. The vast majority of lockdown protesters in the US are white, whereas those disproportionately affected by the virus are people of color. Conversely, in Germany, 93% of those aged 60 and older, people facing higher risks from the virus, have no sympathy for anti-lockdown demonstrations. Undoubtedly, many of those demanding the end of corona-measures are negatively impacted by them, some disproportionately heavily. Their entire existence is at risk because of government restrictions. This should by no means be downplayed. Neither should human rights in times of the pandemic. The point is that there is a difference between making oneself heard by participating in a productive socio-political debate, and obstinately chanting for some sort of personal freedom which was never there in the first place.

There is no easy solution to a crisis as multifaceted as the current one. In fact, one of the greatest challenges in handling the COVID-19 pandemic is that alleviating one crisis seemingly aggravates another. Where individuals find themselves in the crossfire of government crisis-response mechanisms, it is easy to clutch onto the one tower of strength that promises protection from the great sovereign: Human rights. But once the underlying dynamic of this symbolic narrative is taken into consideration, one thing becomes painfully obvious: Insisting on your personal rights won’t heal a sick collective.

Related articles:

The Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy or: The Comeback of the “Ättestupa”

Back from the borderlands: taming and framing COVID-19

Socially Progressive, Economically Conservative: What Does It Mean to Be Liberal?

Human Rights Crisis

Photo credits:

“COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest in Vancouver, May 3rd 2020” by GoToVan is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Vaccine Diplomacy Clouds Over Southeast Asia

Carl Widegrip Dominguez — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:10:06 +0000

On January 20th, Thailand’s government filed criminal charges against Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a 42-year old politician, for alleged violations of a draconian lèse-majesté law which protects the monarchy from insult or defamation. The offense carries harsh penalties of up to 15 years in prison.

What, then, did Mr. Thanathorn do to prompt such heavy-handed punishment?

Two days earlier, during a Facebook livestream, he expressed concerns over what he felt was an opaque procurement and distribution vaccination scheme laid forth by the Thai government. Additionally, he questioned why the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca had granted exclusive local production rights of their proprietary COVID-19 vaccine to Siam BioScience, a biopharmaceutical lab wholly owned and managed by the Crown Property Bureau. The bureau itself is a quasi-governmental agency dedicated to managing the assets and property of King Maha Vajiralongkorn. Like all affairs of the Thai Royal family, the bureau and its subsidiaries remains bereft of public scrutiny.

For his indiscretion, the former political opposition leader now finds himself staring down a lengthy prison-sentence, which may be compounded further if he’s found guilty of multiple counts of lèse-majesté or of the notoriously vague Computer Crime Act.

Yet Thanathorn’s case is merely the tip of the iceberg in a region-wide struggle which pits public safety against political interests.

In what can only be described as vaccine diplomacy, governments around Southeast Asia appear to be favoring unmonitored bilateral relations for political support and economic gain over effective and affordable treatment for their citizens.

Beyond the gaffe between AstraZeneca and Thailand, Southeast Asian nations have struck a string of questionable trade deals on vaccine imports and production. That the vaccines have been commodified for negotiations does little to alleviate the woes of international supply shortages and a near-complete lack of local production capabilities in a time of dire need. Of all the major vaccines available on the market, the biggest player on the Southeast Asian negotiation table is China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

Foreign interests and domestic oversights

The public concerns over inadequate transparency surrounding the vaccine rollouts in Thailand are not unique to the nation, but rather endemic of a larger trend of foreign appeasement present among all member states of the chief regional intergovernmental organisation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Over the past decade, growing Chinese influence in the region combined with low levels of domestic accountability has created a precarious political climate.

Prior to the pandemic, China accounted for the largest single group of international visitors to Southeast Asia. This large presence provides a substantial source of tourism revenue, which certain areas are completely reliant upon. Moreover, China has poured in foreign direct investment into Chinese tourism hotspots such as Sihanoukville in southern Cambodia and Hat Yai in southern Thailand, and a myriad of large-scale joint infrastructure developments has been initiated as part of their Belt and Road Initiative, as well as multiple massive hydropower dam constructions on the Mekong River in Laos.

This asymmetric economic dependence is reflected both in political culture and foreign policy. The negative agricultural impact and environmental degradation stemming from the Mekong River projects have been tacitly accepted. China’s expansionist ambitions in the South China Sea are mostly quietly brushed aside. And when China comes knocking for a show of public support, the ASEAN members are usually happy to oblige them.

Nam Gnouang Dam on a tributary of the Nam Theun River in Laos.

So before many prominent vaccine manufacturers had even published reliable data from their late-stage clinical trials, many Southeast Asian nations had already decided to go with Sinovac as their premier choice.

Indonesia is one such example. After vocalizing early support, authorities signed an agreement with Sinovac as far back as August 25th, 2020—just two weeks after the launch of an Indonesian clinical trial—to import three million doses from China by January 2021 and to later initiate the localized production of at least 40 million additional doses via an Indonesian biopharmaceutical company.

First in line to receive the shot was Indonesian President Joko Widodo on January 13th. In a public display of cosy Indonesia-China relations, a broadly televised event showed President Widodo receiving the initial dose live, along with close-up shots of the Sinovac boxes.

The date is of note, too; two days earlier, on January 11th, Indonesia’s Food and Drug Authority reported their interim findings of the aforementioned clinical trial and claimed the vaccine was 65.3% effective, and was granted emergency use authorization. The next day, Brazil’s local production partner of Sinovac, Butantan, determined the general efficacy of the vaccine at just 50.4% in their late-stage clinical trial.

So while still technically fulfilling the vaccine guidelines set out by the World Health Organization of minimum 50% efficacy, one might expect such low figures to cast the televised publicity stunt into question, or cause some trepidation in the subsequent mass rollout. However, the Indonesian government proceeded with their plan unaltered, and health authorities defended the move citing an urgent need to protect its health workers.

Indonesia is not alone in this regard. Negotiations for the import of hundreds of millions of Sinovac vaccines in aggregate across Southeast Asia have already concluded. The Philippines committed themselves to 25 millions doses due for import in February, at allegedly dubious price mark-ups. Vietnam is primarily looking at importing the AstraZeneca vaccine, but is still in discussions regarding possible Sinovac additions. Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand each had millions of Sinovac doses slated for delivery, but all deals are currently on halt pending more clinical trial data from China after Brazil’s disappointing findings.

Laos and Myanmar, two of the region’s poorest nations, are both notable cases of vaccine diplomacy. Labelled “priority” recipients by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, the two nations’ low bargaining power and weak international clout render them especially susceptible to foreign interests.

Laos is one of the few nations set to receive the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V, but is concurrently in talks to supplement national rollout with Sinovac.

Local publication Myanmar Times reports that a multitude of behind-closed-doors bilateral talks between Myanmar’s Ambassador in Beijing and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs resulted in an agreement to ship the Chinese vaccine to Myanmar by early 2021. In order to secure the deal, Wang Yi sought the support of Myanmar’s ruling military junta for the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor—a localized subsection of the larger Belt and Road Initiative.

The afflictions of politics

While negotiations for the right product at the right price occurs all over the world, Southeast Asia’s propensity for non-transparency in foreign affairs create distinctive issues. There are many economically impaired areas in the region without access to adequate healthcare and which lack a strong international voice to bring attention to any shortcomings of governance. Putting the lives and safety of these peoples and front-line workers at risk, to employ under-the-table dealings to cement diplomatic allegiances is unethical at best and possibly devastating at worst.

As mentioned at the start, not only does this secrecy create civil and legal issues for people who dare to ask the tough questions—as for Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit—but create far reaching public safety issues as well.

After being alerted of the legal charges the Thai government levied against Mr. Thanathorn, AstraZeneca may be showing signs of reconsidering their partnership with Siam BioScience, as a planned news conference on the authorization of the vaccine was abruptly cancelled on January 22nd. The fear of getting dragged into political hot waters may be an understandable disposition for AstraZeneca, but it also means that 50,000 doses that were scheduled to be administered in February might now be in jeopardy.

With the Sinovac rollout now also being temporarily suspended, uncertainty looms large over Thailand’s vaccination scheme. With a population of nearly 70 million, and with no available vaccines at the ready, more victims and economic hardships are sure to follow in the wake of callous vaccine diplomacy.

Related articles:

Unheard South Solidarity: The Asian-African Conference

One Belt, One Road – China’s Path to the West

Photo credits:

“Wat Pho. Bangkok.”, by Adaptor- Plug on flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

“Nam Gnouang Dam (60MW), on a tributary of the Nam Theun River in Laos”, by Eric Baran, via WorldFish on flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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The Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy or: The Comeback of the “Ättestupa”

Oliver Ösmark — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 17:08:06 +0000

A saying attributed to the ever-chipper Joseph Stalin goes: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Seeing death and knowing death are two very different experiences. And it can be argued whether those in charge, untouched by the pain suffered by people who have known and loved the lives of those prematurely stolen by tragedy, can fully grasp the terrible weight and burden of their duties. Logic level-headedness and ardent stoicism are admirable qualities in leaders where others might crack under pressure, but where the person becomes translated into “1”, there is room for indulgence in terrible calculus. While, at times, there is little alternative not to employ statistical methods, the impact of the moral hazard afforded to government officials dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden has been difficult to process.

In the case of Sweden’s response to handling the COVID-19 pandemic, models and wishful thinking have cost the lives of over 7,000 people, most of which, due to their old age, were denied access to treatment in favor of palliative measures to help avoid hospitals becoming overwhelmed. During the first wave, the virus wreaked havoc in nursing homes, where nearly 1,000 people died in a matter of weeks. Early in March, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) sent a directive to Stockholm hospitals stating that any patients over 80 or with a body mass index above 40 should not be admitted to intensive care because they were less likely to recover. Other reports describe sick care home residents being administered a palliative cocktail of morphine and benzos, because the homes were not equipped to administer oxygen, something some doctors have described as “active euthanasia.”

People in nursing homes were triaged out of healthcare and given “No Hospital” notes on their journals even before they got sick. But these interventions were not only reserved for patients who were suspected of having COVID-19. A person with a urinary tract infection in need of hospitalization would not get much needed care either. They received palliative medicine instead. The number of patients in need of intensive care no doubt increased, but as did the number of hospital beds. In early April there were over 300 intensive care units and on the 9th of April 79 of them were vacant. Thus, there was no reason to comply with the tough priorities recommended by the National Board of Health and Welfare.

Critics of the Swedish government’s approach, made up of doctors like Andrew Ewing, a professor at the University of Gothenburg, have given damning appraisals of Sweden’s response to the pandemic. Ewing is a member of a 200-strong scientific collective in Sweden who call themselves the Science Forum COVID-19. Since March they have been outspoken critics of Sweden’s unique approach to the pandemic, which has been notably out of sync with the rest of the globe. After his criticisms were published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet he received wave after wave of hate mail from members of the public unhappy with his remarks. “Some of us even got death threats, for ‘damaging the reputation of Sweden,’” says Nele Brusselaers, another member of the Science Forum.

Cloud cuckoo land

Chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist and the architect of the national response, has described the decision to keep society open as a holistic approach to public health, aiming to balance the risk of the virus with avoiding the long-term consequences of closing schools and businesses—a popular view among many Swedes. The government controversially refused restrictions early on and this approach was even lauded by none other than the World Health Organization back in April as a “model” for battling the coronavirus. Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, said then there are “lessons to be learned” from the Scandinavian nation, which has largely relied on citizens to self-regulate. “I think there’s a perception out that Sweden has not put in control measures and just has allowed the disease to spread. Nothing can be further from the truth,” Ryan told reporters.

It is dangerous to have such strong convictions about an approach that over 2,000 medical doctors, professors, and researchers objected to as lacking credible data to support it. They’ve called on the government to introduce more stringent containment measures. Dr. Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér—professor of immunology at the Karoliska Institute—said: “It is almost a tradition in Sweden to trust the authorities and trust their experts. But I am a scientist, and I don’t trust the authorities, I trust data. The problem with herd immunity is that we do not have any data on it yet, and I don’t think that we should be the first ones to test it. It is an experiment that I did not give my informed consent to and many with me have not done that either. The data that we do have access to and the developments in other countries just say that this is not a safe path to take. Nothing is safe here because many people are going to suffer […] We must establish control over the situation, we cannot head into a situation where we get complete chaos. No one has tried this route, so why should we test it first in Sweden, without informed consent?”

Herd immunity is when a large part of the population of an area is immune to a specific disease. If enough people are resistant to the cause of a disease, such as a virus or bacteria, it has nowhere to go. Individuals can become immune by recovering from an earlier infection or through vaccination. As vaccines have yet to be readily distributed to the public, one has had to rely on exposure—allowing enough members of a population to be infected, recover and then develop an immune system response to the virus. But herd immunity must be achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it haphazardly. Especially when the extent of the harm done by the pathogen is not yet fully understood.

This is because a lot of people die under the scenario of herd immunity. The Swedish experiment has shown as much. More than seven out of ten of all those who died because of COVID-19 in Sweden have had some form of elderly care. 3,002 of the dead have lived in nursing homes and 1,696 have had home care. As of December 6, Sweden’s per capita death rate from the coronavirus is 21st place in the world, at 637.31 deaths per million. Compared to other Scandinavian countries, Denmark has almost 5 times less deaths than Sweden; Finland 9 times; and Norway almost 11 times less. As of December 6, 7,067 people in Sweden have died.

Although Sweden’s Public Health Service and Tegnell insist on the opposite, the core of Sweden’s strategy is generally understood to have been about building natural herd immunity. Both the agency and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven have characterized their approach as “common sense” (“folkvätt”) trust-based recommendations rather than strict measures, such as lockdowns, which they say are unsustainable for a long time—herd immunity was only a desirable side effect. Internal communications, however, say otherwise.

E-mails obtained between national and regional authorities, including the Public Health Agency, as well as those received by other journalists, suggest that the goal was indeed to develop herd immunity—documents of these communications are readily available online. An example that clearly shows that government officials had considered herd immunity early on is an e-mail sent from a retired doctor on March 15 to Tegnell, which he passed on to his Finnish counterpart, Mika Salminen. In it, the retired doctor recommended that healthy people be infected in controlled environments to fight the epidemic. “One point would be to keep the schools open to reach herd immunity faster,” Tegnell noted at the top of the email. Salminen replied that the Finnish Health Agency had considered this but decided against it, because “over time, children will still spread the infection to other age groups.” In addition, the Finnish model showed that closing schools would reduce the “attack’s share of the disease in the elderly” by 10%. Tegnell replied: “10 percent can be worth it?”

Three men make a tiger

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven

The majority of the rest of Sweden’s political decision-makers seemed to have agreed: the country never closed daycare centers or schools for children under 16 and school visits remain mandatory under Swedish law without the possibility of distance education or home tuition—not even for children with family members in high-risk groups. They effectively decided to use children and schools as participants in an experiment to see if herd immunity to a deadly disease could be achieved. Several outbreaks in schools occurred in both spring and autumn.

Löfven, his government, and the Public Health Service all say that the high death rate due to COVID-19 in Sweden can be attributed to the fact that a large proportion of these deaths occurred in nursing homes due to shortcomings in elderly care. But it was the high degree of infection throughout the country that was the underlying factor leading to many infections in nursing homes. As previously stated, many sick elderly people were not seen by a doctor because the country’s hospital implemented a triage system which included age and predicted prognosis. According to a study this was likely implemented to “reduce the burden on [the intensive care unit] at the expense of more high-risk patients—such as the elderly with confirmed infection—who die outside the ICU […] Only 13% of the elderly residents who died with COVID-19 in the spring received hospital care, according to preliminary statistics from the National Board of Health and Welfare, which was released in August.”

During the first eight months of the pandemic, Sweden did not quarantine infected households. Sweden’s official policy was that those without obvious symptoms are very unlikely to spread the virus even though evidence pointed to the risk of asymptomatic spreaders. Other countries rushed to obtain masks and personal protective equipment for care staff and providers in nursing homes, but Swedish authorities discouraged their use claiming that they give people a false sense of security and that social distancing is more important. But these two in conjunction are surely more effective than one measure on its own. There have been many reports that care personnel have been reprimanded or even fired for using facemasks at work, as it was considered to spread panic.

Statistics show that on May 24, Sweden conducted only 23.64 tests per 1,000 people, one of the lowest rates in Europe. When more tests were finally obtained in the summer, many were of poor quality. “Everyone wanted to test more, but there were no tests,” says Jonas Ludvigsson, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute. “We did not make the equipment ourselves, and other nations had banned any export to keep all the equipment in their own countries. When Sweden finally got hold of test equipment from abroad, the quality was so poor that the tests could not be trusted.”

Still, the architects in the Swedish approach sell it as a success to the rest of the world. And officials in other countries, including at the top level of the US government, are discussing the strategy as one to emulate—even though in reality it will almost certainly increase the death toll and suffering.

Despite the relatively high deaths, reports of medical negligence in nursing homes, and test errors, Sweden’s COVID-19 strategy still has a relatively high degree of support among citizens. An opinion poll in September reported that 63 percent of those polled maintained confidence in Tegnell’s approach, although this was a slight decrease from a figure of 69 percent in April—support in the government’s response has sunk from 49 percent in May to 34 percent in September.

Yes, we can’t!

The Swedish government has not been entirely passive. On March 12, the government limited public gatherings to 500 people and the next day, the public health service published a press release telling people with possible COVID-19 symptoms to stay at home. On March 17, the Swedish Public Health Agency asked employers in the Stockholm area to let employees work from home if they could. The government limited further public gatherings to 50 people on March 29. Still, there were no recommendations for private events and the limit of 50 people did not apply to schools, libraries, corporate events, swimming pools, shopping malls or many other situations.

Minister of Social Affairs Lena Hallengren

As of April 1, the government restricted visits to nursing homes (which were reopened to visitors on October 1 without masks recommended for visitors or staff). Meanwhile, institutions were forced to make their own decisions: Some colleges and universities switched to online tuition, restaurants and bars spaced out tables and seats, and some companies introduced rules about wearing masks on site and encouraged employees to work from home. But the rules imposed by the temporary “crisis law” only lasted for three months until June 30 and, despite the fact that the spread of infection is now increasing at a rapid pace, there is no attempt being made by the government to renew the temporary law.

Why? Politics. The Swedish Minister of Social Affairs Lena Hallengren says that the government’s powers were limited and therefore did not become useful: “It was a big problem, because then it was a big job that had to be done. We wanted a mandate from the Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament) to be able to make decisions quickly. We did not get that mandate from the Riksdag. I think the Riksdag told us that they do not want us to have such a large mandate.” This is patently untrue.

The regulations announced by the government were to be presented “immediately” afterwards in the form of a bill for review in the Riksdag—”immediately” meaning a few days. But, as commented by a spokesperson for the main opposition party in the parliament, Tobias Billström, the government was given exactly the powers it asked for back in April when the Riksdag voted, almost unanimously, in favor of the government’s proposal. It was a government agency—the Council on Legislation—that wanted the government’s regulations on shutdown measures in retrospect to be quickly submitted to the Riksdag for review. According to Billström, writing such a bill in such a short time would not have been a big problem. The issue here is a lacking work effort by the government.

“The government has made it an art to blame everyone but itself.”

Indeed, the approval process was simple and efficient in the spring. In practice, it would have been enough for the government to send an A4 page with the reasons on their action plan to the Riksdag. This is something that the Government offices with its 4,500 employees should be expected to handle. Nothing is preventing the government from acting, but the government is choosing not to pursue another temporary law. Instead, Hallenberg began to develop a new and more elaborate pandemic law, which is planned to enter into force next summer.

The government has made it an art to blame everyone but itself. When their crisis management fails, it is the fault of the municipalities, the regions, authorities, the Swedish management model. The list goes on. The prime minister even gave a speech to the nation where he scolded the Swedish people for not following the Public Health Agency’s advice and recommendations without any hint of self-criticism. And now it is the Riksdag’s turn to be on the receiving end of Löfven and team’s finger wagging.

The experiment is over

Crisis laws are a sensitive issue because they affect citizens’ fundamental freedoms and rights—the freedom of movement in Sweden being guaranteed by constitutional law. “The government will continue to make all the necessary decisions to reduce the spread of infection,” said Prime Minister Stefan Löfven at a press conference on November 19. Clearly, the government has not been able to get the public to voluntarily limit themselves to staying at home. They are also still squabbling about whether or whether not face masks are effective protection against the virus (they are) which is going to waste more time, in turn straining more resources, putting more pressure on an already exhausted health care workforce.

However, the rise in infections has prompted the country to take more forceful action in recent weeks. The country has moved to ban the sale of alcohol in pubs and bars after 22.00 and Tegnell told Swedes this week that the government may be forced to impose travel restrictions across the country “just before Christmas”. The Swedish experiment may be over, but the pandemic is not. Only time will tell if what was not done was made right by what was. At the time of writing, much seems very wrong and much will need to be answered for.

Related articles

Back from the borderlands: taming and framing COVID-19

The quarantine phenomenon

Photo credits

Anders Tegnell in 2020 (11 av 15), by Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Stefan Löfven EM1B1409 by Bengt Nyman, CC BY 2.0

Socialdemokrat.Lena Hallengren 1c301 5973, by Janwikiphoto, CC BY-SA 3.0

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How life will disappear if we continue to overexploit nature

Aimée Niau Lacordaire — Sun, 17 May 2020 14:35:59 +0000

The Amazonia and Australia’s fires, the coronavirus, and the invasion of insects in Africa: those four disasters that hit between 2019 and 2020 have one point in common; they are all due to the impact of humans on nature.

The extent of the damage

During the years 2019 and 2020, 4,700 square kilometers of the Amazonian forest burned, the equivalent of the size of 628 football stadiums. There are at least 1.6 million hectares of the Australian forest which burned and 2000 koalas that died during the fire. And more than 228 000 people have died of coronavirus in the world. Furthermore, East Africa is being invaded and ravaged by locusts. Due to the lack of information on the impact of the locust invasion, we don’t exactly know the extent of the damage, however, this greatly affected the harvests and therefore risks famine. But the worst is yet to come. Because these phenomena are only going to multiply if we continue to overexploit nature.

What are they due to?

In fact, the forest fires in Australia are the results of an exceptional drought and heat waves which are unquestionably linked to global warming. Likewise, the cyclones that hit Africa have favored the insects’ circulation and reproduction. It’s the extreme climatic variations that caused those cyclones, and so ideal conditions for these locusts. In Amazonia, the climate alone does not explain forest fires, but they are also due to humans who want to appropriate the land to cultivate it. In the 90’s, deforestation was principally due to agriculture, but now it’s the expansion of soybean plantations in order to feed livestock, which is the number one cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

The coronavirus were been transmitted to humans by a pangolin, and these animals are heavily poached, “researchers estimated in 2017 that between 400,000 and 2.7 million pangolins are now hunted each year in the forests of Central Africa to supply the Asian market”.This animal is on the verge of extinction, not only because of poaching but also because of deforestation, which made them lose their habitat. Moreover, the passage of virus from animals to humans is easy because of intensive breeding which makes it easier for the virus to move between species; as with the H1N1 flu. It has also been proven that the coronavirus causes higher mortality rates in regions with a high rate of air pollution.

What does the future hold for us ?

In Australia, temperatures and droughts peaked in 2019 and researchers have shown that if we do nothing about global warming, these high levels of heat will be the norm in a few decades. The forest allows the absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is why the Amazon constituting the largest forest in the world is called “the lungs of the Earth”. Unfortunately, when the dynamics of tree mortality intensifies, the trees will no longer absorb but reject this CO2, and therefore contribute to global warming. Evidently, this leads to a devastating loop and therefore the death of thousands of plant, animal and human species.

If we continue to poach and eat wild animals more and more diseases will be transmitted to humans. In addition the food chain would collapse if animals were to disappear. And if we continue to consume as much meat as we currently do, and therefore encourage intensive farming, more viruses will be transmitted and cause more and more deadly pandemics.

We saw that nature takes over during confinement, animals have reclaimed the territory of humans, and pollution has slowed down. It is therefore possible to limit our impact on nature. It is therefore more than necessary to take drastic measures if we want to prevent the extinction of species. It is necessary to stop overconsumption, to stop animal exploitation, to fight against overheating. If no action is taken, thousands of plant species will disappear causing the death of the animals, we will face extreme weather, which will slowly destroy the human species, starting with those who already suffer from it, the poorest.

by Aimée Niau Lacordaire

Photo Credits

Koala, Mathias Appel, CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Fire, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region U.,S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Regio, Public Domain Mark 1.0

Sheep, Bernard Spragg. NZ, CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

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The quarantine phenomenon

Ioana Pavel — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 10:22:06 +0000

At a time when societal divisions seemed unequivocally pervasive, the world has stumbled into an equally unequivocal common tragedy. From those wealthy enough to seek refuge inside their yachts and private islands, to those sleeping on cardboard beds on the side of the road; from the northern icy lands to the musically-inclined south; uniting old foes, unwilling partners and lonesome souls, a virus is forcing all of humanity to stay inside wherever they might call home. A borderless, invisible force has overwritten and rendered everything that the world took for granted obsolete. Behind our windows, within our four walls, and within the walls of our minds, we are now all experiencing life from the standpoint of an imposed quarantine.

As adaptable as the human mind is to change, it is also change-averse. Having one’s way of life upended and constricted, rewritten by external, uncontrollable forces is gruesome. It is gruesome as experienced from a luxurious estate, it is gruesome from the confines of a shoebox-sized dwelling. It is gruesome for those who have lost their employment and lifelines. It is gruesome for those resting on a cushy savings account. As the world economy dwells in peril, humanity altogether looks ahead in common uncertainty. Whereas divisions such as class, race, gender and physical ability are now more forceful than before and clearly differentiate the manner and severity that each group will be impacted by the pandemic, this moment in history serves as an opportunity for the world to finally grasp a concept that has been touted for so long: that human beings are equal. While some groups are more likely to perish from the virus than others, for once, divisions are no longer segregated by borders. The world is, in a sense, united. United in grief, in vulnerability, in fear.

This unity is an opportunity to finally see the invisible, marginalized groups, which has long been too uncomfortable a thing to take into consideration. As distractions become increasingly unavailable, as the world watches the nightly news in despair at the growing number of cases and deaths reported, it is faced with a choice: to carry on blindly, and come out of this quarantine unchanged; or to open its eyes to the suffering of millions and take action. No human being on this planet is left without a task during this pandemic. While some are left without jobs, everybody is called to do their part. Some must put their lives at risk for the safety of others, some must walk the streets for the safety of others and some must stay at home for the safety of others.

Never before has the suffering of others been so widely reported and never before has the opportunity to help those in need been so widely available. As this borderless tragedy hits the world in its entirety, humanity has a chance to shift its tunnel vision to a more compassionate wide-angle view.

Photo Credits:

Quarantine, congerdesign

Solidarity, geralt

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Back from the borderlands: taming and framing COVID-19

Louis Louw — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 09:01:20 +0000

Since Covid-19 has begun to spread across the globe, cries for re-establishing, re-enforcing, generally making less permeable, or even shutting down borders have rung louder than ever in recent years. However, this raises the question as to whether Covid-19 can be effectively combatted and curbed by these extraordinary securitization measures along national borders in the times of globalization and its eclectic flows of human interactions and migration.

Scratching the surface for a tentative answer, quarantining certain areas has indeed proved to be effective in restraining the virus from spreading across certain communal, provincial, national, and regional borders. Take the example of the quarantined Chinese province of Wuhan, which seems to have stemmed the tide in one of the heaviest hit regions in the world. Indeed, as from mid-March, life seems to be returning to normal as shops, schools, and other public institutions re-open while the workings of daily life are once again taken in stride.

Symptoms of the borders as antidotes for the state

Despite this initial success, it does not follow that national borders truly are the solution, part and parcel, for combatting Covid-19. In all probability, murky waters will crystallize with the benefit of hindsight as further qualitative and quantitative data is collected and presented. Therefore, I believe it’s too early to dwell on the exact implications of national border securitization as it stands. However, I also believe that it’s important to understand how the discussion of national border securitization frames the idea of the state in relation to its citizenry, by differentiating and (dis)qualifying the citizen from the non-citizen or denizen. What I mean specifically is that the question at hand shouldn’t solely revolve around whether or not national borders are effective in their materiality to protect the citizenry from contagion, but rather that the threat of Covid-19 to this materiality has led to a distinctive and unprecedented comeback in the theoretical and figurative capacity of borders to frame and embody the power of the state. Again, this re-emergence of stately power further draws the line between (non-)citizen, and denizen.

It’s not a border if it’s open, dummie!

In the immediate aftermath of the WHO declaring Covid-19 a pandemic, it was not and still is not uncommon to hear a familiar line of argumentation, which at once carries with it a sense of grief, a pang of anger, and a hope for betterment:

“Why haven’t they shut down the borders!?!”

By ‘they’, of course, national authorities are implied, and it is in this evocation of the state as the guardian of the citizenry, in which the discussion of Covid-19 ultimately proves problematic. In order to protect the body politic, the borders themselves become seen as the infected organ marked for incision through the state’s scalpel. After all, in terms of its effectiveness, the discourse centring on border securitization to curb the spread of Covid-19 is not necessarily wrong. It might indeed impede the rapid spread of the virus, and therefore the means possibly do justify the ends. But the question then arises whether this incision at the borders is the most effective method to combat the spread of the disease? Or if there are any other courses of action that could be just as or even more effective?

From the angle of global problems requiring global solutions, over-reliance on the national state as the sole protector of the citizenry arguably diverts attention and the resources that flow with it from the actual concern at hand, namely, how to engage with global problems through transnational cooperation that benefits people, that is, all people, and not capital? Imagine de-regulating the healthcare sector while slapping fat prices onto its services in the name of efficiency in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Where has the trust in the universally prescribed forms of development gone, which in their first instance were supposed to secure borders and thus the prosperity of Global Northern states? In terms of global crises, it appears that the chickens are coming home to roost.

The Covid-19 effect

And in this ultimately lies the great conundrum of Covid-19’s impact on modern thinking. If national borders do work, then only because they are valued over the global perspective as the model to fall back on during a crisis. Even more so, as the global system of deregulated and precarious standards set by development practices, well, they don’t seem enticing enough to be co-opted when the fat hits the fire. The theoretical implications are immense. What does it mean and what does it take to think outside a privileged national polity, and what does that mean for non-citizens in general (especially as they potentially already live outside the realm of regulatory dignity) and denizens in particular, who are fed into the machinery of labour and transnational value creation but are yet denied to draw from its surplus, one instance amongst many being dignified health care?

In sum, the impact of Covid-19 will of course be remembered in the overall symptoms it measures, the deaths it sentences, the financial disintegration it exacerbates, the medical innovation it anticipates, or any other effects it entails and produces for that matter. In effect, it will be remembered in how it was tamed. However, for better or for worse, the true legacy of the contagion will find its expression in how it will come to frame the relationship between the state and its (non-)citizenry. That is, in the ways emergencies accentuate, infuse, engender, or mitigate cries for sustainable development worthy of the name with future discussions of belonging to a state, in and for which borders matter more than ever as a first and, perniciously, last line of defence.

Photo credits:

Corona World, MiroslavaChrienova

Passport, OpenClipart-Vectors

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