Name: Ignoring the lesson of Sweden makes a tougher Covid crackdown inevitable
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Ignoring the lesson of Sweden makes a tougher Covid crackdown inevitable

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It has been a while since we have heard from . It was, famously, his advice that led to the first lockdown – which he claimed, at the time, would limit deaths to about 20,000. This was, alas, not the case: lockdown succeeded in crushing the economy but did not stop Britain from ending with one of the world’s highest death rates. Now, history seems to be repeating itself with cases again rising fast. Ferguson is back, with new apocalyptic scenarios for a second wave and calls for fresh restrictions. Yet again, his thinking is setting the direction of Government policy.The latest crackdown – the – will likely be just the start. A 10pm curfew, for example, is under discussion, even “exemplary arrests” of some unsuspecting students who might be rash enough to throw a house party. The arrests would be intended to shock, to show that the police mean business. Ministers who have been briefed on all of this have come away saying it’s extraordinary how quickly the mood has changed, how quickly the earlier optimism has died. And how little interest there seems to be in finding another way.Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, has persuaded the Prime Minister of a new pattern of Covid, but it’s written off as a harmless surge because they’re so unlikely to become seriously ill. But they pass it on to the old and eventually hospital numbers go up – and, then, deaths start again. Britain, he believes, is now in the first part of this cycle, so should act now. And if we can just get through this winter, runs his argument, there’s a good chance that the scientific cavalry will be here for the spring. No need to “live with the virus” if there’s a vaccine, or some other breakthrough.The Prime Minister needed very little persuading: he has long been worried about a second wave and has been obsessed with the Spanish numbers. Whitty says France is also a cautionary tale, that both left it too late. The Belgians, he argues, did it better. They took swift action to stop their summer infections (curfews, etc) and stopped the rise in its tracks.The Belgian model involved rules tighter than anything Britain had during lockdown. A curfew was imposed in Antwerp from 11.30pm to 6am. Only one person was allowed to go out shopping, and do a bit of a Lockdown Supermarket Sweep with just 30 minutes allowed inside. The penalties for flouting the rules went right up to imprisonment. If Britain is now moving to try and force back Covid infections – regardless of whether they’re causing serious illness – far more tools would be needed. Prof Ferguson suggests more working from home.The other part of the Government’s strategy is to change the public mood, so people mix less. We can expect more blood-curdling language, similar to Matt Hancock’s claim that young people who seek to live normal lives risk killing their grandmothers. It’s intended to be incendiary, and make people a bit less confident about how safe it is. If the idea is to stop Covid cases, and stop worrying about the social or economic cost, the new strategy is certainly coherent.But it’s all a bit surprising from “It breaks my heart to have to insist on these restrictions,” he said this week – but, he said, he has no choice. This is where he’s wrong. The choice is not between Spain, France or Belgium. There is another country whose example we could equally have decided to follow. One which may soon be seen to be handling the pandemic better than any country in Europe.It’s a myth that Sweden’s sparse population somehow makes it less vulnerable to the virus: its deaths, as a share of population, are almost as bad as Britain’s. Its “second wave” of infections started in July – but what happened challenges Whitty’s theory. always said it was important not to read too much into test numbers: the hospital data, he said, was more reliable. These figures stayed more or less stable. So Sweden kept its nerve – and its liberty.Sweden, now, looks like a country from a parallel universe. Children didn’t miss a day of school, there was no exams scandal, its economic hit was less than half of ours. While Britain prepares to limit social gatherings to six, Sweden is lifting its cap to 500. Tegnell says there won’t be a second wave. Its virus levels are now lower than Denmark or Norway and its government announced a surprise surplus for the month of August because its economy is unexpectedly strong. Debt in Britain, by contrast, is expected to have risen almost as much in August alone as in the whole of the 1970s.This takes us to the heart of the current dilemma. If it’s inevitable that a surge in positive tests among the young leads to deaths in the old, why didn’t this happen in Sweden? How is Whitty so sure that Britain is facing a resurgence – rather than just a modest rise – in hospital cases? Ministers whisper that the Prime Minister is in receipt of secret and scary data from his. But if so, it certainly hasn’t been shared with the rest of us. Nor with parliament.Yes, Sweden is a different country to Britain. But so is Belgium. As Bath University’s Simon Wood has pointed out, the trajectory of the virus in Sweden and Britain was strikingly similar – ironic given our very different approach to lockdown. The Swedish model of restraint was, and remains, an option for Britain. The difference isn’t geographical, but political.The choice is still there to be made. The British data hasn’t settled yet, and our ripples in hospital admissions are nothing like a surge. It’s hard to argue that the NHS is at the slightest risk of being overwhelmed, which was the original rationale for the first lockdown. Only yesterday, Sweden was added to the list of countries judged to be safe for Brits to travel. Its Covid levels are now half that of Belgium, which remains on the banned list.Whitty might well be correct. The new Covid threat to Britain might be far bigger than the official data suggests – but his argument, so far, is pretty unconvincing. And after seeing Sweden’s success, there are a lot more questions to be answered on why we really are so sure that Britain could not achieve the same.Related TopicsThe Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our.You need to be a subscriber to join the conversation. 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It has been a while since we have heard from . It was, famously, his advice that led to the first lockdown – which he claimed, at the time, would limit deaths to about 20,000. This was, alas, not the case: lockdown succeeded in crushing the economy but did not stop Britain from ending with one of the world’s highest death rates. Now, history seems to be repeating itself with cases again rising fast. Ferguson is back, with new apocalyptic scenarios for a second wave and calls for fresh restrictions. Yet again, his thinking is setting the direction of Government policy.The latest crackdown –...

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Fraser Nelson

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Ignoring the lesson of Sweden makes a tougher Covid crackdown inevitable

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