On May 5, GSL Director Steven Hoffman was quoted in a Global News story illustrating the response Sweden had to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Swedish government and public health experts decided to largely leave the economy and country open and count on the citizens to stay at home if they felt symptomatic. Thus far, they seem to have been successful with that tactic.
In the article, Hoffman laid out some of the factors that have contributed to Sweden’s successful soft strategy. One of the factors all over the world seems to be that countries with well-funded public health infrastructures seem to be able to deal better with the pandemic than others. Sweden, according to Hoffman, has invested “enormous” amounts of their budget to build a competent public health infrastructure. On the Swedish people’s side, Hoffman argued that Swedes are a highly socially-cohesive society, have high levels of trust in their government and high levels of civic-mindedness, which translated into the government being able to take a more experimental route of curbing COVID-19.
Read the full article here.
Previous