COVID RESPONSESweden During the Pandemic: Pariah or Paragon?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden stood out from other countries, stubbornly refusing lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandates. The main difference between Sweden’s strategy and that of most other countries was that it mostly relied on voluntary adaptation rather than government force. It seems likely that Sweden did much better than other countries in terms of the economy, education, mental health, and domestic abuse, and still came away from the pandemic with fewer excess deaths than in almost any other European country, and less than half that of the United States.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden stood out from other countries, stubbornly refusing lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandates. This was highly controversial and many outsiders saw it as a dangerous gamble with human lives. From a Swedish perspective, however, it looked like it was other countries that were engaging in a dangerous experiment.
This analysis describes Sweden’s policies and the reasons for its choices, and it presents some preliminary conclusions about the results. Sweden’s economy got through the pandemic better than comparable countries, and elementary school students have not suffered learning losses. These benefits do not seem to have come at the expense of human health. Remarkably, total excess deaths were smaller in Sweden than in any other European country during the three pandemic years (2020–2022), and the rate was less than half of America’s. In the absence of strict government control, Swedes adapted their behavior voluntarily.
Introduction
Sweden was different during the pandemic, stubbornly staying open as other countries shut down borders, schools, restaurants, and workplaces. This choice created a massive interest in Sweden, and never before have the foreign media reported so much about the country. Many outsiders saw it as a reckless experiment with people’s lives. In April 2020 President Donald Trump declared that “Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown.”1 In the New York Times, Sweden’s laissez faire approach was described as “the world’s cautionary tale” and in the same pages Sweden was described as a “pariah state.”2
There remains a popular perception in the rest of the world that Sweden’s strategy resulted in a human disaster, and many people think that Swedish decisionmakers came to regret the strategy and, in the end, adopted lockdown policies similar to those in other countries. This paper dispels those unwarranted assumptions, describes Sweden’s actual pandemic policy, explains why the country followed that course, and presents what we know about the results so far.
Sweden’s Strategy
The main difference between Sweden’s strategy, which was adopted under a government coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, and that of most other countries, was that it mostly relied on voluntary adaptation rather than government force.
