Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story. Sweden shocked the world this spring when
Speaker 1: the government decided to keep businesses mostly open and impose
Speaker 1: far fewer restrictions on movement to stem the COVID nineteen outbreak.
Speaker 1: But the controversial strategy may have paid off. Was it
Speaker 1: worth the death toll? But first, here's what happened in
Speaker 1: virus News today. India past Mexico in COVID nineteen fatalities,
Speaker 1: making it the country with the third largest death toll
Speaker 1: in the world. The country is fast becoming the new
Speaker 1: virus epicenter, behind only the US and Brazil in both
Speaker 1: deaths and infections. The virus has swept India's vast rural areas.
Speaker 1: The grim milestone comes a day after the country set
Speaker 1: another record, reporting the most daily infections of any country.
Speaker 1: It's seventy eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty one new
Speaker 1: infections surpassed a previous high set by the US in Uganda.
Speaker 1: The coronavirus outbreak is spreading quickly. Health care facilities in
Speaker 1: the capital Kampala have run out of bed capacity, according
Speaker 1: to the newspaper New Vision. The newspaper cited Monica New Scenario,
Speaker 1: the Presidential advisor on the outbreak, as saying the city
Speaker 1: is racing toward uncontrollable transmission. Finally, in the US, most
Speaker 1: people see the vaccine process as politicized. According to a
Speaker 1: new survey from Stat and the Harris Poll, seventy eight
Speaker 1: percent of Americans worry that the COVID nineteen vaccine approval
Speaker 1: process is being driven more by politics than science. Seventy
Speaker 1: two percent of Republicans and eighty two percent of Democrats
Speaker 1: expressed such concerns. The results underscore speculation that President Donald
Speaker 1: Trump may pressure the US Food and Drug Administration to
Speaker 1: approve or authorize emergency use of at least one vaccine
Speaker 1: prior to the election, but before testing has been fully completed,
Speaker 1: according to STAT and Now for today's main story. Recently,
Speaker 1: Sweden won praise from one of the World Health Organization's
Speaker 1: six Special Envoys on COVID nineteen, Dr David Navarro. Navarro
Speaker 1: said the key to assist anable coronavirus strategy is trust
Speaker 1: and highlighted Sweden as a case in point the Nordic
Speaker 1: nation imposed far fewer restrictions on movement than other countries
Speaker 1: and instead relied on Swedes to act responsibly and embrace
Speaker 1: the guidelines laid out by the country's health authorities, but
Speaker 1: the country's strategy has been controversial. Sweden's COVID nineteen death
Speaker 1: rate is considerably higher than in many other countries, at
Speaker 1: fifty seven per one hundred thousand people, but the pace
Speaker 1: of new infections and deaths has slowed markedly since the
Speaker 1: end of June. I talked to Stockholm based reporter Nikolas
Speaker 1: Rolander about how the strategy was devised and where the
Speaker 1: country has gone right and wrong in fighting the virus.
Speaker 1: What has been Sweden's strategy to battle COVID nineteen since March.
Speaker 1: The strategy has been based on mainly on voluntary measures
Speaker 1: from from the public. So Sweden has taken some legal decisions,
Speaker 1: such as to ban public gatherings of more than fifty people,
Speaker 1: but it has largely avoided more stringent lockdowns than that
Speaker 1: many other countries have imposed, and instead it's urged its
Speaker 1: citizens to take responsibility themselves, to keep a distance to
Speaker 1: work from home if they can, and to stay home
Speaker 1: if they have any symptoms of COVID. Schools have remained
Speaker 1: open largely, shops have been open, restaurants have been open,
Speaker 1: with some restrictions when it comes to how many people
Speaker 1: they let in and the distances between patrons, and the
Speaker 1: argument has been that these more loose restrictions are more
Speaker 1: sustainable in the long run than a lockdown where everyone
Speaker 1: is forced to stay at home. But Sweden has always
Speaker 1: made the argument that this is something that we'll have
Speaker 1: to live with for a long time, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: better to have measures that are sustainable, that that are
Speaker 1: possible to keep going for for a long time. So
Speaker 1: what have been some of the major criticisms of sweden strategy.
Speaker 1: I think domestically, the critics have focused a lot on
Speaker 1: the death rates, which are at the moment about ten
Speaker 1: times higher than in Norway, five times higher than in Denmark.
Speaker 1: So it's from that perspective there is definitely a cause
Speaker 1: for concern about what what sweden strategy has meant for
Speaker 1: death rates. Its also say that Sweden could have bought
Speaker 1: valuable time earlier in the pandemic by adopting specter measures
Speaker 1: to learn more about how the virus behaves and develop
Speaker 1: better methods for treatment that could have saved lives if
Speaker 1: we had just delayed some of the transmission we had
Speaker 1: early on. There's also the claim that Swedish public health
Speaker 1: experts have underestimated the role that asymptomatic spread has played
Speaker 1: in the transmission of the disease, and that has underpinned
Speaker 1: some of the decisions that Sweden has made. Now I'm
Speaker 1: interested by keeping schools open, many businesses open. What has
Speaker 1: been perhaps the impact of this strategy on Sweden's economy.
Speaker 1: The impact has been slightly less bad than comparable countries.
Speaker 1: It's not a huge difference, though. We still have pretty
Speaker 1: historic PLoP and g d P, and Sweden's economy is
Speaker 1: very reliant on exports, so so no matter how how
Speaker 1: much better we're doing in the domestic economy, we will
Speaker 1: be hurt by by a decrease in in international demand.
Speaker 1: So it may not have been as as different as
Speaker 1: you might think it would would be from from other countries,
Speaker 1: but still slightly less affected than than other countries. You know.
Speaker 1: Looking to the last few months, say the summer months,
Speaker 1: there has been seemingly some good news coming out of Sweden,
Speaker 1: with lower daily death rates or lower reports of new cases.
Speaker 1: Does this perhaps account for changing global opinion about whether
Speaker 1: or not Sweden had the correct strategy all along. Definitely
Speaker 1: that's contributed. I think there's probably two factors behind that.
Speaker 1: One is that we've seen a rapid decrease in transmission,
Speaker 1: number of cases, number of cases in I See you,
Speaker 1: and the number of deaths as well. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I think people are obviously looking at Sweden for clues
Speaker 1: on how to approach this pandemic more long term. And
Speaker 1: that's also the case that's been made by for example,
Speaker 1: w h O experts that after this space of very
Speaker 1: strict lockdowns that may or may not may not have
Speaker 1: been necessary in the early phases of the pandemic to
Speaker 1: really stem the transmission, you now need to look at
Speaker 1: something that's more sustainable that you can hold onto for
Speaker 1: a longer period of time, and that's always been Sweden's approach.
Speaker 1: So Sweden it's more likely to be seen as a
Speaker 1: model at the stage of the pandemic than it was before,
Speaker 1: you know, taking a long look at sweden strategy over
Speaker 1: the last six months or even longer, there has always
Speaker 1: been this question of whether the intent behind this policy
Speaker 1: was to achieve herd immunity. Do you think this was
Speaker 1: part of the strategy overall, or do you think that
Speaker 1: there's much more broader factors at play. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you listen to the public health experts in Sweden, they
Speaker 1: have consistently denied that her immunity was the aim of
Speaker 1: the strategy. They have said, why it may be the
Speaker 1: case that sweden strategy will lead to bigger transmission and
Speaker 1: therefore more immunity, that has never been the primary target.
Speaker 1: I mean, some critics have questioned that and called it
Speaker 1: a stealth strategy, but the official line is that her
Speaker 1: immunity is not part of the strategy. And after a
Speaker 1: few months into the pandemic, I think it was clear
Speaker 1: to public health experts here as well that this virus
Speaker 1: wasn't really behaving in the way that previous similar viruses have.
Speaker 1: So the idea that the virus would be spreading widely
Speaker 1: throughout society society and that a large portion of the
Speaker 1: population would be infected within a reasonably short period of
Speaker 1: time wasn't really how this panned out. Instead, it's been
Speaker 1: more about very local outbreaks and so called cluster or transmission,
Speaker 1: which makes it much harder to reach that level of
Speaker 1: immunity and the population, and so recently public health experts
Speaker 1: here have have stressed that we don't have the levels
Speaker 1: of immunity that protects us from further outbreaks. Now that
Speaker 1: we're looking to the end of summer and oncoming flu
Speaker 1: season the start of a new school year, how iswen
Speaker 1: looking ahead to say, the fall or winter um with
Speaker 1: with these elements kind of on the horizon. I think,
Speaker 1: just as in the rest of the world, we're looking
Speaker 1: forward with some prepidation. I mean, the situation right now
Speaker 1: looks pretty positive, but you shouldn't forget also that we
Speaker 1: have we still have more cases than in many other
Speaker 1: countries that had more strict lockdowns, and there will be
Speaker 1: local outbreaks. So we'll see what happens during the fall,
Speaker 1: and the public health authorities will publish their report on
Speaker 1: new guidelines for the fall this week, and there may
Speaker 1: be some reconsidering of things like face mosques, which Swedish
Speaker 1: public Health Agency has been very skeptical of so far
Speaker 1: and have said that there may be a case for
Speaker 1: advising the use of face masks in some situations where
Speaker 1: it's hard or impossible to keep a proper distance. That
Speaker 1: was Nick class Rowlander and that's it for our show Today.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the outbreak from one hundred and bureaus
Speaker 1: around the world, visit bloom dot com slash Coronavirus and
Speaker 1: if you like the show, please leave us a review
Speaker 1: and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the
Speaker 1: best way to help more listeners find our global reporting.
Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Top for Foreheads
Speaker 1: Jordan Gaspore, Magnus Hendrickson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main
Speaker 1: story was reported by Nick Las Rolander. Original music by
Speaker 1: Leo Sitran. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi.
Speaker 1: Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.