It was with a slight sense of trepidation that my wife and I turned onto the dusty track that led up to the cluster of pretty falu red farmstead buildings (I wore a shirt to match) on the edge of Vreta Kloster. Vreta Kloster, on the shores of lake Roxen, 120 miles south west of Stockholm and 1,300 miles from Shropshire, is home to the ruins of Sweden’s first nunnery, the Tonkin golf ball museum and Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s State Epidemiologist until March this year when he stood down. Anders Tegnell who, in the face of unimaginable international pressure, personal abuse and threats of physical violence, refused to be bullied into signing Sweden up to the global lockdown experiment – an experiment with entirely predictable consequences.
Sweden has emerged from the pandemic with amongst the very best outcomes on almost every metric – the economy, children’s education and emotional development, mental health, domestic violence, alcoholism and of course excess deaths. It is, in part, because of Sweden that lockdowns did not go on for longer in the U.K. and if lockdowns are never used again that will be, in large measure, because of Sweden too. To those of us across the world that had not succumbed to mass hysteria, it was Sweden that, for two long years, gave us hope and kept us sane.
So when deciding where to head to in our campervan for our summer holiday, we were drawn to mask-free Sweden. And why not, we thought, whilst we are there, drop off a note expressing our personal gratitude to Tegnell and his family. So it was on a glorious sunny day in late August we found ourselves heading up the track to the Tegnell’s Verta farmstead with a letter and two bottles of the Grange, surprisingly good, English sparkling wine – not French, for obvious reasons. Conscious that this unannounced visit might be seen as a little odd or even slightly disturbing, our plan was to drop and go whilst sort of hoping…
As we pulled into the yard, Margit Tegnell, Anders’ wife came out of the house. Margit was slightly taken aback but her initial look of slight concern was replaced by one of amazement and appreciation as we explained our mission and paid tribute to them both. Anders was not there so we handed over our present and a few minutes later, mission accomplished, Margit waved us off with a gift of plums. The golf ball museum was closed so we headed for Stockholm.
Later that evening I received an email from Anders. “Sorry to have missed you, if you are returning this way please come and say hello.” Of course we were! Two days later we found ourselves back at Verta Kloster, sitting on the decking with Anders and Margit Tegnell, overlooking the recently harvested wheat fields running down to Lake Roxen. Anders was relaxed, he looked well and in good shape for 66; being proved right is clearly good for the health. Friendly and amazingly candid, for the next two hours, the four of us drank tea, ate home-made plum tart and chatted about the past two and a half years.
We talked about his approach of treating the Swedish people like adults, the popular domestic support even during the second wave, and about Swedish politicians taking a back seat. We talked about Neil Ferguson – his track record and his media skills – and the generally reasonable Swedish press. We talked about conference calls with world leaders (Rishi was against lockdown) and the tacit and sometimes explicit (but private) support for Sweden’s policies from political leaders whose panicked rush to lockdown had left them politically boxed-in with no option but to double down. We talked about masks (“don’t work at a population level and can give a false sense of security”) and about asymptomatic transmission (“not a major driver of infection”). We talked about children and closing schools – Anders is rightly proud that Sweden did not inflict the inevitable catastrophic damage on children that the rest of the world has done. The Swedish Corona Enquiry found that Sweden had got most of the big calls right, but we talked too about the high death toll in care homes (I didn’t know the Swedish courts refused to allow care homes to deny family visits) and the high death rates amongst those born outside Sweden.
And I asked if he had received an invitation from Dame Heather Hallett to appear before the U.K. Covid Enquiry. He hadn’t – it’s surely in the post.
Anders didn’t do it alone; he had robust professional and political support and a close-knit family behind him, but he was the point man. And as we headed back down the track on the long road home, I did start to wonder – what if Britain had stuck to its original plan with an unwavering Anders at the helm and Boris, the Churchillian leader and defender of freedom we hoped he might be, backing him all the way? How would it have played out?
David Stacey runs a farming and property business.
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Sweden got lots of things wrong too – there were some restrictions, some closures, lots of people stayed at home, and of course they vaxxed everyone, not to mention they actually stopped the unvaxxed from entering for a long time.
However as well as providing a very useful control case for restrictions vs outcomes, they also give the lie to the bullshit excuse I hear from a lot of ex-covidian faux cynics, who often say “well of course it was an overreaction but the politicians and public health officials had no choice, it was politically the only possible choice”. Well, the Swedish government and public health officials survived. I’m sure they came under plenty of pressure, including from the Swedish Royals, and there was some backsliding, but they made choices and stood by them.
Restrictions were minor. Few wire masks and people voluntarily stayed home just during the first couple of weeks.
Minor compared to the UK, but I would not call them minor. Large gatherings were banned and group sizes for social and business events were limited to maybe 50 people. I was in Stockholm in October 2020 and it was way quieter than it was when I was there recently – lots of people were working from home. I think senior schools were closed for a while. Life felt quite normal because the people that were around were behaving normally – no masks and no social distancing – but it most certainly was not normal.
You are correct. Far less restrictions than most of the world, to be sure, but that is of course a pitifully low bar to clear. Universities and high schools were still closed for a good chunk of time. Care homes banned all visitors for six months straight, albeit belatedly. And public gatherings of more than 50 people (later reduced to 8 people in height of the second wave), and unlike the USA and UK, there was no exception even for BLM for protest gatherings.
Meanwhile, Nicaragua’s far-left government actually *encouraged* mass gatherings. Yes, you read that right. Belarus never even closed universities, sport continued as normal, and the only thing they closed was museums. Tanzania briefly closed schools, but had no restrictions at all from May 2020 onwards. And South Dakota had barely any restrictions at all, the least of any state, and lifted all statewide restrictions from May 2020 onwards.
And the Swedes had more choice more freedom if they wanted to stay at home they could but if they didn’t they were free to go about their business, no masks, little anti-social distancing and they could carry on being educated. Granted the experimental gene therapy treatment was a low point.
I’m sure there was a story about Sweden having below average all-cause mortality from January 2020 to June 2021. As well as Belarus having similar all-cause mortality to its neighbours whilst (for example) allowing spectator sport to continue. Those UK politicians who supported harsher restrictions owe us an apology.
If I remember correctly didn’t Tegnell stand down to take up a job at either the UN or the WHO?
Then they u-turned and said that actually they didn’t want him after all. So basically getting him out of the way?? I bet Sweden’s new State Epidemiologist is suitably on board with the ‘correct’ procedures.
Ah, like the replacement of the president of Tanzania who absolutely definitely was not murdered…
I know – strange that?
Tegnell absolutely deserves a lot of credit, it must have been quite difficult to withstand the pressure. Nl’s Jaap van Dissel started out well, following a pandemic plan not too far removed from that of Tegnell’s, even refusing to advise face rags for as long as possible. The push from politicians who were former journalists and primary school teachers won out in the end, as they told us with a big grin that sure, face rags were an outright violation of the Constitution, but hey, what’s the harm.
However, if I’m not mistaken Tegnell was fully on board with the vaxx, I think I read somewhere that he said they had been proven to work well (never proven, now shown to be useless and still the claim of ‘effective’ lives) and he recommended them.
Even if he believed the original claims, and even if originally some benefit could actually be seen for the most at-risk groups, why would he ever have agreed that they should be given to the entire population? There is info available from the Dutch public health authority from December 2020 saying that the government shouldn’t say the vaxx would prevent covid, as there was no proof for that. They knew all along it was only supposed to suppress symptoms, why did any of them agree to roll out a novel vaxx using a technology known to be problematic (and toxic) to the entire population, knowing that at best a small group of at-risk people might benefit from it and that for everyone else at best the risk/benefit ratio would be a wash, at worst the risks would outweigh the benefits (now proven to be the case).
Maybe I’m mistaken, maybe Tegnell did oppose the vaxx roll-out, but if not, this does unfortunately diminish his accomplishment. What is the point of saying we got through the pandemic itself quite well, but we’ve caused unnecessary deaths and injuries through the vaxx? And are continuing to do so. Now CDC bimbo Walensky is advising people to get poked every 2 months!
“The push from politicians who were former journalists and primary school teachers..”
The root cause of our democracies problem: the revolving door between the media and the extended civil service.
Always ending in a tyrannical kakistocracy.
Indeed. We call it “K Street” or “The Swamp” here in the USA.
Yes interesting, and well done David Stacey! It would never occurred to me as a “normal” person to drive right up to his house and pay thanks.
Going through the “pandemic” in England, I would love to have heard more from Andres about his interactions with UK governmental “officials” (Hancock, Whitty and Vallance in particular) to hear his view on our dramatic U-Turn in March, 2020. We’ve all assumed it was nob-head’s dossier of gloom, but I’ve always though there was something more behind it also – apparently there were a lot of emails back and forth between Sweden and the UK governments.
And I’d have no reason to doubt Andres’ candor nor assertions.
But like others, there’s the bitter taste of bile in my mouth when I think of Sweden’s vaxx strategy and mandates. How much influence would Andres have in this area, given his expertise? I don’t know (I can’t recall any directly related quotes or videos), but I’d love to hear his reasoning, or why he stayed silent if he did.
I’m (finally!) off to Calgary in October (presuming Canada’s tin-pot petty authoritarian dictator allows it) to visit my mother, and David Stacey as inspired me to find Artur Pawlowski and say thanks.
Cheers
Did Sweden have vaxx mandates? Other than for non-residents entering the country, I am not aware of any.
No, no vaxx mandates. But in December 2021 Sweden introduced the vaxxanazi pass. I only quickly scanned some headlines, it doesn’t look like it was as strict as in other countries, but the fact they introduced it at all is a black, black mark against them. NL didn’t have mandates either, just coercion, blackmail and constitutional violations.
The world knew in July 2021, when Israel started on the 3rd shot, that the vaxx failed to stop transmission and infection – well, they knew all along, it could just no longer be denied.
We also knew in November 2021 that the vaxx was next to useless against the Omicktake variant. So even for someone who could ignore the outrageous civil rights abuse that the apartheid app constitutes in and of itself and believed it could have a use in terms of slowing transmission, how could they still back it when by November 2021 there was absolutely zero doubt it would be of no use whatsoever in terms of transmission and infection?
No health professional who truly cared about people’s health should ever have backed, outright or tacitly, something that fell only marginally short of a forced medical intervention. Add to this the fact that they had zero knowledge of what this poison would do to people. Had leading medical professionals taken a stand and publicly stepped down, perhaps this egregious abuse and the now wide distrust of vaccines and health professionals in general could have been avoided.
All this harm just to cover up politicians’ mega mistakes and make pharma companies mega rich… First do no harm to the bottom line
Wasn’t it an EU thing the vax pass? If EU Countries joined then the domestic vax pass worked throughout EU.
Yes and no. It was an EU thing in terms of making travel between the countries easier. The EU did not determine (at least not openly) whether the vaxxanazi pass was to be used inside a country and where. From what I just read Sweden was using it for events with more than a certain number of people, restaurants and so on. Not sure how far it went there.
In NL they kept people out of bars, restaurants, gyms, swimming pools and were discussing keeping people out of hairdressers and shops other than supermarkets. In Austria they were literally stopping people in the street and asking for their ‘papers’, they prohibited unvaxxed from leaving their homes! In France and Italy they applied the pass selectively to older people who did not get a 3rd shot, in Italy prohibiting them from going into post offices where they get their pension and also stopped them from accessing public transport. Some countries would only allow the pass to apply to people who were vaxxed or recovered, NL still allowed people to be tested as well, but the government was pushing hard up until December 2021 to eliminate that possibility as well. Even now the current shameless Dutch government is trying to get the pass back into operation – the temporary legislation was struck down by the Dutch senate, they are trying to get it enshrined in permanent legislation claiming that restaurants and bars are themselves begging for the option. Absolute, outright lie, they never wanted the damn thing and they still don’t.
The entire pass thing has zero, nada, zilch, rien, nichts, nothing, niks to do with health or a virus. No decent human being should ever have supported its use.
And they tried it on in Wales as well, to some extent.
The UK, or rather England, had the best moral performance with regard to the Vaxxpass in Europe.
One never needed it outside of a few mass events, and even that went quickly, was barely controlled and, at least initially, had a self-exemption option (I used it in Wentworth).
Not that the elite and the chattering class didn’t want and try to have and extend it, but the people simply resisted.
Full credit for that goes to the English population, which, as with the earlier tried t&t folly in and by restaurants etc., by and large wouldn’t stand for it, didn’t want it at all and as such boycotted it (James Bond …) so that it had to be pulled quickly.
I like to think that the demos also played a decisive role.They certainly did, when the criminal vaxx mandate for the NHS was prevented and the one for care workers was rescinded.
The rest of Europe was a huge and surprising disappointment in those regards, as previously with muzzles, in case of Southern and Eastern countries and France and its collaborating population, and an expected confirmation of prejudices in the case of the 3 Germanic countries and their zealously complying, enforcing and objectors denunciating and prosecuting people.
AFAIK, the vaxpass in Sweden was only for gatherings of more than 100 or so people, correct? Which is still wrong, of course, but a shade less bad than the rest of Europe at least.
Yes, me cuz lives in Stockholm and said that the pass wasn’t strictly enforced or checked for, but apparently *no one* wanted to take the chance of being caught out.
In her age cohort (early 30s), they all got vaxxed to avoid the significant possibility of inconvenience. What a sad indictment on the state of public health when those willingly put their lives on the line, taking an experimental drug just to ensure hassle-free engagement with their friends and family.
Sigh …
The USA still requires the jabs (albeit only two doses) for non-citizens to enter the country.
We’re all probably speculating as to why they did a U-turn, but I can remember that the nob-head did end up being in hospital for a short while, allegedly suffering from C19, which might have changed his attitude. The other item I can remember was that one of the staff there quoted what his body mass index was; not nice (if that was true). I know they should not have issued any records like that, but whether it was an accident or a sensible guideline to avoid being overweight etc, I don’t know.
Jesus, you’ve just made me think of Johnson’s body mass index, now I feel ill. Thanks.
🙂
Interesting to read what your visit was like. Anders Tegnell looked like a relatively sane participant in the difficulties a couple of years ago, although not perfect. Your comment about the English wine that he had in stock reminded me of a visit to a senior manager’s place in Rönninge around mid summer some years ago. I was in Stockholm for a week or so on account of working for a firm based there, and it turned out that he had a fair amount of products like that at home. Of course, the official attitude to a certain amount of booze was (and still is) a bit different from here. Anyway, he had some rather good English red wine from the Thames Valley, which was new to me, even though I know where it is geographically.
I’ve spent some time in Stockholm around both winter and summer solstices, and being so far north it is more noticeable to an outsider about how people behave at different times of year. Might be relevant to any consideration of anyone’s vulnerability to infections of the kind under consideration.
Much as I appreciate that Tegnell stood firm managing the coronavirus problem in a sensible way, I find that he is used to justify technocratic rule. He himself as well. as others point out that part of the Swedish success story is that politicians in Sweden deferred to the ‘experts” and let them pretty much call the shots.
Actually that is what happened in almost every country that went nuts with crazy draconian measures. Every politician claimed to be standing back and “following the science” and sticking to the advice of the “experts’. In the UK we had Sage, Vallance and Whitty supposedly guiding the process. In the US they had Fauci. Same story pretty much everywhere. We all know what they prescribed.
And that sort of sums up the problem with technocratic and indeed authoritarian rule. You might get the odd good outcome, the occasional wise, benevolent dictator, as it were. But for the most part you get tyranny and misery.
Notwithstanding the fact that Tegnell is an absolute legend for inviting this chap to his home for a chat. Clearly he must be a very nice guy.
You make a very good point. It will probably forever remain a mystery as to whose hand was up whose backside between the politicians, SAGE and others. It was hard to tell, and they tended to blame each other. Ultimately it’s for politicians to make this kind of decision as they are accountable. Of course they take “expert” advice, but any leader worth their salt will look at advice from various sources and crucially learn techniques to evaluate advice even if they are not expert in that subject, by asking probing questions. I know this is possible because I have seen this done, in the workplace, by some of the better bosses I have had or known.
When the panic broke out, most of the politicians had been in general election mode into December 2019, so that probably had an effect on it all. Maybe they were so obsessed with other matters, that they were not competent at dealing with it properly.
That’s how it should work, if politicians pursue the best interests of the general population.
But I’m afraid practically no senior politicoan anywhere works for the general population. They work to further their own careers and in the interests of those who can propel them, which are the few very powerful and well connected.
Those that actually try to work for ordinary people don’t last for very long before they are taken down
With very few exceptions (people on this site among them) everyone’s critical faculties went walkabout, so politicians had no incentive to worry about anyone’s best interests but themselves. If there had been a big push back from the public and/or other institutions, media, opposition, other major world powers, they would have had to think more carefully.
I was thinking about BoJo in that regard recently.
If he isn’t a psychopathic nihilist in on it, and if he wasn’t such a lazy, easily manipulated and spineless narcissist but had stuck to his (alleged) libertarian principles and beliefs that got him the job, he would not just have had his Churchill moment and opportunity, but risen up to it and he would be able to claim success and c/would now justifiably be compared to him, just what he always dreamed about.
The country would be in terrific shape compared to others, the next GE would already be his, and he might even be close to being crowned World King, certainly he’d be performing that role in practice now.
Stick to your instincts and your firm principles and beliefs on freedom, especially when the herd stampedes towards another direction and away from them.
That is, if he really ever had those principles, of course…
The big question that will remain unanswered is whether he failed to stick to his professed ideas because he is lazy and feeble or because he was leaned on very heavily.
I am quite certain it is mostly the latter.
One thing is to let Sweden get away with rogue behaviour. Even then the assault on Sweden by western media was relentless. The lies and mischaracterisation of what was going on in Sweden was brutal.
But if Britain, still a major country, would have stood as an example against the lunacy in the way Florida did, the Chinese-Gates-WHO approach to covid may have collapsed. The UK experience would have been harder to ignore and harder to mischaracterise.
Hmmm, wholeheartedly agree – if only the UK had stood firm. The U-turn was a real kick in the gut for me (and for other’s here, I am presuming).
I was enjoying fielding the early March, daily WhatsApp messages from family in Oz, Canada, US, Europe: “Dave, what is Boris Johnson doing??” Me: “A bloody good job!”
Sigh, how wrong I’d turn out to be.
Bozo learned the hard way that if you try to please everyone, you ultimately end up pleasing no one. And now, he is a man without a country.
I would like to know from David Stacey: Did a discussion about vaccines and their efficacy enter the conversation at any point? What is Mr Tegnell’s stance on the widespread deployment of the novel mRNA vax technology? Does he encourage the universal uptake of this product regardless of age or health status?
I’m glad David went to say thank you, and would happily have contributed to a case of quality bubbly. If anybody is heading that way again then let’s make it happen folks (I go to Sweden now and again due to family, but his location is out of my way). Anders’ is a legend. Shame about the vaccine stance, but presumably he had no better info than others who were given fraudulent data by Pfizer. It would be interesting to know if his stance has evolved, but it was a thank you visit for coffee and cake, not an interview, and it would have been rude to have put him on the spot – or, at least, it would have been rude to have published the findings of the interview on the DS.
The term “Stockholm Syndrome” should really be renamed “Melbourne Syndrome” IMHO.
Indeed, Sweden was the control group, along with Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and 12 US States, most famously South Dakota. And of course Florida after their brief quasi-lockdown in the beginning. And the Amish too. And to a lesser extent Brazil, Uruguay, Taiwan, and Japan (if you ignore the school closures in Brazil and masks in the latter three, of course) can be seen as a quasi-control group as well. And what were the results? Excess deaths were either lower than their stricter neighbors or national/regional averages, or even at worst were still within error bounds of same.
Interestingly, Sweden and Nicaragua both provide a good yardstick for what it would have been like if political polarities were reversed, i.e. if the left were anti-lockdown and anti-mandate, and the right were pro-lockdown and pro-mandate. And on the right-wing pro-lockdown side, we have India and the Philippines.
Wow, how lucky were you that your little scheme worked. What an amazing couple of hours that must have been.
Anders was given a very rough time but he mostly stood his ground.
This man is a giant in a Europe of unprincipled, career driven, weak-kneed public health pygmies.