Were We Wrong on COVID?

The United States went all in on a lock down during COVID while Sweden let nature take its course. Which was the better strategy?

Some evidence points to Sweden. In a piece that originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune (yes, the Tribune, you may insert your liberal suspicions here), Cory Franklin, a retired doctor, makes a convincing case that Sweden’s strategy was more successful overall. While infection and mortality rates were similar (and hard to compare given the differences in baseline health between the two countries), Sweden’s economy grew during the pandemic while ours contracted and their students suffered no learning setbacks while our kids took a big hit.

Now, Franklin is simply a doctor, not a public health researcher. I would expect that we’ll get much more detailed and scholarly studies about all this in the years to come. But I found Franklin’s analysis convincing and sober. He wasn’t screaming from an ideological pulpit. He didn’t try to claim that doing nothing would be the right strategy for the next pandemic. He simply compared some commonly available data points and presented some conclusions, which he was quick to temper with caveats.

The pandemic split America along the expected political/cultural lines, but the Swedish approach mixed things up a bit. Liberals, like me, tend to worship Western European and Scandinavian democracies for their liberal social policies and robust social safety nets. We also tend to think that paying high taxes is a virtuous act that would gain us a place in heaven, if we believed in an afterlife.

So, it was uncomfortable for us to see one of our hero countries taking a tack that wasn’t much different from MAGA America. Things went sideways. Ron DeSantison. How could a nation of well-educated, liberal, Volvo drivers, who were also tall and good-looking, agree with all those basketfuls of deplorables? Actually, we tended to avoid the question. Sweden was an outlier and, anyway, it wouldn’t be the first time they went off the rails and embraced their darker side. Have you ever seen an Ingmar Bergman film?

But now at least this preliminary data would seem to suggest the Swedes were right and, by inescapable extension, so was Ron DeSantis. But if the MAGA’s were right it wasn’t because they knew something we didn’t. DeSantis, et. al., simply saw an opportunity to exploit a culture wars opening. The 1960’s script had been flipped. It used to be the left that didn’t trust the establishment, but now that the left is the establishment we trust ourselves implicitly. Those “Question Authority” tee shirts could now be worn under a MAGA hat.

What the COVID deniers did get wrong was the paranoia. This was not a conspiracy led by Anthony Fauci to destroy the American economy and somehow bring about a socialist revolution. These were dedicated public health professionals and scientists who, based on their knowledge and research, believed they were doing the right thing. They don’t deserve to be vilified.

But if liberals really believe that “science is real” as the lawn sign tells us, then we have to follow it wherever it leads, even if it leads us away from things we once fervently believed and even if it suggests that we must, as grudgingly as possible, admit that on this one MAGA America was, more or less, sort of right.

And on another matter… another day, another bad poll for Joe Biden. The latest New York Times/Siena poll is out and it’s the same old, same old, only a little worse. Among likely voters Trump leads in five of six swing states. His lead is beyond the margin of error in three: Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. It’s closer in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Biden would have to sweep those last three and hold onto all the other states he won last time in order to win. And this despite Trump’s hush money trial and a steady stream of good economic news.