I feel like Tegnell’s original mistake was his disbelief that asymptomatic spreaders existed. His entire strategy was based on this and worse, he loudly and publicly criticized other countries that chose to lockdown because unlike him they were fully convinced about the existence of asymptomatic spreaders.
Once his strategy to protect the vulnerable failed dramatically due to asymptomatic carriers (and the fact that people make bad decisions), it was too late for him to back down and it’s been Iraq war all over again. One day he is criticizing other countries saying that what they are doing is not sustainable and then in the next breath complaining that his strategy has been misrepresented and what he is doing isn’t different from what the rest of the world is doing.
It’s been unfortunate to watch his inability to admit his initial mistake lead to so much unnecessary suffering and pain.
He's made a long string of bad judgement calls and spurious statements.
However, I'm more appalled by the government's complete mismanagement. They have completely pushed responsibility onto this single man, who cannot be held accountable in public elections. His job is to be a key advisor. The politicians are the policymakers and the only enforceable decisions they've made is pretty much to prohibit gatherings of more than 50 people and close down high schools.
To a degree, they did a sane thing: listened to the advice of an expert. Now if you look at the other side of the ocean where the orange man didn't listen to the advice of an expert, look what happened.
I don't know how these things work in government, but relying on the opinion of just a single expert might not be the best strategy to win here. It's unlikely though that policy makers will come out in the worse shape here than they were before because even though they might have failed (a big if in the long run), they've relied on the advice of the experts rather than their beliefs.
Let's look at the track record of the supposed experts at FHM. A few favourites:
"The virus will not spread in Swedish society under the current circumstances. We might see a few cases." (February)
"A large proportion of the population will gain immunity, this will lead to herd immunity. No patients will have to be triaged away." (March)
"The number of ICU patients and infected elderly is stabilizing. Our measures in society are proving effective." (March)
At some point, a responsible and reasonably intelligent person will realize that maybe this particular expert is lacking in expertise and the two dozen or so of other domestic experts (all of them virologists, epidemiologists, professors in medicine etc.) that are fervently recommending stricter measures might have a point.
Swedish politicians have a great knack for avoiding the responsibility they ask for in the elections, and they're really good at shifting blame. I sure hope they won't get away with it this time.
Once his strategy to protect the vulnerable failed dramatically due to asymptomatic carriers (and the fact that people make bad decisions), it was too late for him to back down and it’s been Iraq war all over again. One day he is criticizing other countries saying that what they are doing is not sustainable and then in the next breath complaining that his strategy has been misrepresented and what he is doing isn’t different from what the rest of the world is doing.
It’s been unfortunate to watch his inability to admit his initial mistake lead to so much unnecessary suffering and pain.