Ishaan Tharoor writes:

As societies battened down the hatches and imposed quarantines, one European country appeared to take a different approach. In Sweden, there have been no invasive lockdowns to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Restaurants and even nightclubs are operating, though under guidelines to enforce social distancing. Schools for students under the age of 16 remain open. Large gatherings are restricted to a maximum of 50 people, a far cry from the enforced confinement imposed on entire cities in other parts of Europe.

These seemingly lax measures attracted the attention of lockdown skeptics elsewhere, who hailed the “Swedish model” as an example of how a Western democracy ought to deal with the pandemic. It became a cause celebre among American conservatives, who resent the economic toll exacted by social distancing restrictions. Even for nonconservatives, the Swedish approach is now being invoked as an obvious “alternative” to what prevails. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested this weekend that President Trump may hope to “follow Sweden” as he seeks to “reopen” the American economy.

But Swedish officials are hardly championing their own experiment as a template for the rest of the world. “This is a marathon, this is not over by any means,” Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter, Sweden’s ambassador to the United States, said in a recent interview with Today’s WorldView. She pointed to many “misconceptions” about what Sweden is and isn’t doing in its fight against the virus.

Some media outlets make it look “like everyone in Sweden is out drinking and partying,” she said. “That is not the case.” [Continue reading…]