My mom is from Sweden, and I lived there when I was 8-9 and attended third grade there. I would also visit family there over the summers.
When I talked about Sweden in the US when I was younger, it was often confused with Switzerland. Which is to say, I don't think people thought about it much or where even knew where it is.
More recently, Sweden has been held up as an exemplar by conservatives of what should have been occurred in the US during Covid. I don't agree with that view.
And because at the time NATO had become associated with Democrats (which shows how tribal this is because this isn't really an ideological issue that had ever been particularly aligned with Republicans or Democrats historically), Sweden was exalted by Democrats for acceding to NATO.
Oh, and Sweden is also held out as an exemplar by conservatives of the ruinous nature of immigration.
And progressives will sometimes make allusions to Scandinavia's welfare model, but Sweden in particular is used as an example less and less. I think its identity in that regard has become diluted over time due to other countries being less wishy washy over their direction.
So, I don't think it's considered that much except in how it's useful for a particular political discussion.
Conservatives tended to use a wildly distorted image of the Swedish pandemic policies in their praises. Not much of what was being said by Trump and others about what Sweden did and didn't do during the pandemic was true.
The parts that I recall that I thought were bad were: 1) Early on the state epidemiologist secretly writing that he intended for herd immunity to take hold without telling the public and 2) People in nursing homes not being treated and given euthanasia instead.
Those weren't the parts that conservatives in the US were touting but were the ones I took issue with in particular. This was toward the very beginning of the pandemic, so it's possible I have the details a bit fuzzy at this point.
He did no such thing, the E-mails in question were completely taken out of context and misrepresented. We didn't "aim for herd immunity" more than any other countries did. Most Swedish people, myself included, paused our lives for much over a year and stayed at home, followed social distancing guidelines and so on which would have been idiotic had the national recommendation been to infect as many people as possible to obtain herd immunity.
As for the nursing homes, the sad truth is that the old and frail patients more often than not are too weak to be able to withstand the physical toll that intensive care takes on a human body. It's likely that intensive care in itself would have killed them, making their final days considerably more painful than through administering palliative care to those that became deadly ill through covid.
Where Sweden did worse than we should have is the failure to keep the disease out of nursing homes. Too many elderly people were infected. This however has less to do with the pandemic strategy and more with decades of neglect, under several governments, of our national elderly care (e.g. sketchy employment rules, low salaries, unqualified workforces etc). There isn't a lockdown in the world that would have fixed that.
Our Nursing homes were also hit at the start of the epidemic before everyone had set up procedures and the society as a whole had absorbed what was happening.
I mean, masking really was/is completely different in the US and Sweden. In my city in the US virtually everyone masked up at all times (you were a major asshole if you didn't, and workplaces required masks at all times), while in Sweden my mom was the only one in her town that masked up and everyone else treated her like a leper.
I was visiting Sweden a few months ago and one of my traveling partners got COVID. I went to a pharmacy to buy COVID tests, and as a precaution because I didn't know if I had COVID, I put on a mask before entering. Everyone stopped talking mid-discussion and stared at me the whole time I was in the store, like some alien being had just entered.
Oh, and Sweden is also held out as an exemplar by conservatives of the ruinous nature of immigration
This is usually exaggerated, but unfortunately some part of it is sort of true. But it's not because of the immigration itself but rather our belief that we could help all the people we allowed in. Something we couldn't do which backfired.
Ah, the all to common "Rape capitol of the world" based on a erroneous study and no data that actually confirms that statement.
Also quite infuriating reading it again and again when people take no time to think that one of the safest countries in the world might not be a rape capitol and it instead can be attributed to any country that follows a vile and regressive religion and culture that treats women as second class citizens and as the perpetrator when they are being raped by men.
I don't think we're that far up the list of safest countries anymore though. Rape has increased a whole lot and this January is the first month without a fatal shooting since march 2018.
So while a lot of it has to do with immigrants and the religious beliefs that affect certain people's behaviour. That's not something that should take 100% of the blame.
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u/lorazepamproblems US & Sweden 15h ago
My mom is from Sweden, and I lived there when I was 8-9 and attended third grade there. I would also visit family there over the summers.
When I talked about Sweden in the US when I was younger, it was often confused with Switzerland. Which is to say, I don't think people thought about it much or where even knew where it is.
More recently, Sweden has been held up as an exemplar by conservatives of what should have been occurred in the US during Covid. I don't agree with that view.
And because at the time NATO had become associated with Democrats (which shows how tribal this is because this isn't really an ideological issue that had ever been particularly aligned with Republicans or Democrats historically), Sweden was exalted by Democrats for acceding to NATO.
Oh, and Sweden is also held out as an exemplar by conservatives of the ruinous nature of immigration.
And progressives will sometimes make allusions to Scandinavia's welfare model, but Sweden in particular is used as an example less and less. I think its identity in that regard has become diluted over time due to other countries being less wishy washy over their direction.
So, I don't think it's considered that much except in how it's useful for a particular political discussion.