Johan Anderberg is a Swedish journalist and writer who has been a regular contributor to a number of Swedish and international media outlets, including Fokus, Sydsvenskan,andTheWall Street Journal. His book “The Herd: how Sweden chose its own path through the worst pandemic in 100 years” will be published in the U.S. this month.
EPISODE LINKS
The Herd: How Sweden Chose Its Own Path Through the Worst Pandemic in 100 Years (Affiliate Link) https://sciencentric.com/link/the-herd-how-sweden-chose-its-own-path-through-the-worst-pandemic-in-100-years/
Follow Johan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johananderberg
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(Note: The following transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.)
00;36;52;13 – 00;37;08;01
Johan Anderberg
The whole backstory of the pandemic shifted, and it was not about keeping the health care system in check. It wasn’t about keeping people from dying. It was after well, it became about people should get COVID. And these were saying, we’re like, this is impossible.00;37;13;14 – 00;37;33;07
Eric R Olson
Hey, guys. Eric Olson here. And welcome back to the Science Center podcast. Couple of quick reminders before we dove into this episode’s content. For one. Remember to like this video and to subscribe to the channel. We’re trying to get to 1000 followers on our channel and every new subscriber helps us along the way.00;37;33;07 – 00;37;55;11
Eric R Olson
So thank you. The other thing is, if you really like what we do here, you can support us directly on Patreon. We have a couple of nice benefits over there, including early access to new episodes, ad free episodes, and you can also participate in a monthly Q&A with me where you can suggest show ideas, guest ideas and00;37;55;11 – 00;38;16;13
Eric R Olson
help shape the direction of the show. So check out the description or head over to science centric dot com slash support for more info. Johann Andre Berg is a Swedish journalist and writer who has been a regular contributor to a number of Swedish and international media outlets, including Focus, Sydney and Skin.00;38;16;20 – 00;38;33;27
Eric R Olson
I’ve probably not seen that right. And The Wall Street Journal. His new book is The Herd How Sweden Chose Its Own Path Through the Worst Pandemic in 100 Years. So Johan, welcome to the podcast. So great to have you here.00;38;35;00 – 00;38;36;06
Eric R Olson
Thanks for joining us.00;38;37;00 – 00;38;37;12
Johan Anderberg
Thanks.00;38;38;21 – 00;39;05;13
Eric R Olson
Cool. So your book is called The Herd. And having read it, I get the impression that when you’re talking about the herd, you’re not just talking about herd immunity. You’re talking about the herd as in sort of herd mentality and people, you know, going along with what other people think.00;39;06;22 – 00;39;18;10
Eric R Olson
Is that the case? And my other question about that is, you know, what? What was the origin of this book? How did it come about? And when did you start writing it?00;39;20;19 – 00;39;39;07
Johan Anderberg
I started writing it just like a few weeks after the pandemic hit really hard. And in the US and in Europe and it became pretty clear that Sweden chose its own path. And at that time, this concept of herd immunity was really prevalent.00;39;39;07 – 00;40;03;02
Johan Anderberg
And you were totally right about the double meaning of the word, because that’s what I that was one thing that was very clear early on that the from the Swedish, this one very much looked like the rest of the world was thinking thinking the same that dissenting voices were weren’t really heard.00;40;03;13 – 00;40;20;29
Johan Anderberg
I mean, you can you could definitely see dissent or hear dissenting voices if you look really hard. But to my understanding and to most Swedes, like most Swedes, were very surprised that so many prestigious media outlets were on the lockdown.00;40;21;00 – 00;40;21;11
Johan Anderberg
Things.00;40;22;23 – 00;40;23;04
Eric R Olson
Mm hmm.00;40;25;15 – 00;40;43;29
Johan Anderberg
Swedes are very much into, like, you know, professional journalism or mainstream media, as some people call it. And as a journalist in Sweden, we’ve been raised with the, you know, The New York Times and The Washington Post, the BBC being the gold standard of journalism.00;40;43;29 – 00;40;49;11
Johan Anderberg
So I thought it was kind of terrifying to see them not questioning the assumptions here.00;40;50;00 – 00;41;17;27
Eric R Olson
Yeah. Yeah, I, I think that yeah, there was sort of a consensus in the US media about you know, following what guidelines the experts put forth and such. And I think people were, I think journalists here were probably a little bit, you know, scared about putting out information that was wrong or contradicted the experts and then, you00;41;17;27 – 00;41;38;25
Eric R Olson
know, being responsible for deaths as well. You know, it’s a it’s a bit of a precautionary thing. So maybe I think a lot of people early on in the COVID pandemic followed. What followed the story with Sweden? I mean, I know I did.00;41;38;25 – 00;41;59;02
Eric R Olson
I was like, wow, this is this is a little bit unusual what what they’re choosing to do. The Swedish government in particular. But maybe you could just tell the audience what Sweden did that that was different just to kind of set up kind of how the how this unfolded.00;41;59;02 – 00;42;08;05
Eric R Olson
But what what what were the main things that were different compared to say let’s just say the United States, because I think my audience would be most interested in that.00;42;10;02 – 00;42;25;18
Johan Anderberg
I think there are a number of. Things that are very different. Like, first of all, we didn’t have any lockdown or we didn’t have a lockdown at all. After about a year or maybe eight or nine months, there were some, I would say pretty harsh of.00;42;25;26 – 00;42;55;13
Johan Anderberg
But compared to other countries, they weren’t that strict and there weren’t very many locks either. It was mostly like recommendations, and no one pretty much wore face masks at any point. But I think the numbers was like, I guess like 10% of people were during the subway rush hours when it was actually recommended for a few months00;42;56;01 – 00;43;28;07
Johan Anderberg
. So and I mean, there are a lot of small things as well. Like, we haven’t given the vaccine to kids, something they probably won’t do. So basically, I think the main difference is that the Swedish authorities didn’t really see the risks associated with having COVID US high versus US and weighed other risks.00;43;28;21 – 00;43;45;04
Johan Anderberg
We came to lockdowns and also the vaccine, I guess. And so it was pretty much a totally different approach. Yeah, early on and even now, when all the laws are off the books and like the pandemic is officially over since half of Europe.00;43;45;29 – 00;44;13;19
Eric R Olson
Yeah. So it’s a, how do I want to phrase this the. So there’s different. So I’m thinking back to like early on in the pandemic, like, you know, March of 2020. And I, you know, I remember thinking like at that time, like I was really advocating that schools shut down because we didn’t know what was happening.00;44;14;14 – 00;44;33;01
Eric R Olson
We didn’t know how serious this was. And I remember when the schools actually finally shut down, that was like I was like, okay, this now people are taking this very seriously because it’s like once schools shut down that has this all these, like, ripple on domino effects through the society.00;44;33;02 – 00;44;55;29
Eric R Olson
Like, parents can’t work. Obviously, that’s a huge thing. Like, you know, we have to find alternative daycare and that sort of stuff. So what I’m curious about is that and I mean, you detail this in the book, although, you know, you’re getting more into the science, but like this this group of Swedish epidemiologists, I mean, how did00;44;55;29 – 00;45;11;22
Eric R Olson
they know how did they know what they were doing was right? Or did they just like. Was it just kind of faith or. You know, I mean, it takes a lot of of of strength, of will to kind of oppose everything that’s going on around you.00;45;11;23 – 00;45;17;25
Eric R Olson
So is it just come down to personality or, you know, what what was the difference there?00;45;19;16 – 00;45;44;00
Johan Anderberg
I think personality is an important part of it. Mm hmm. Well, when I needed to know who was man in charge when he was hired to the Public Health Authority the first time his mentor B like that, he was so unfazed and so and that he didn’t really care about what people thought of him, you know, that00;45;44;02 – 00;46;12;16
Johan Anderberg
he was he was not like a political human being. So I guess a lot of other scientists, he would have just felt the need to do what everyone else did. And in Denmark and Norway, the scientists there kind of wanted to do the Swedish path, but they were overrun by their politicians and they didn’t really make a00;46;12;16 – 00;46;33;19
Johan Anderberg
big fuss about it in the media or anything. So like, I guess the personality is one part, but they also like judging from the all these emails I’ve read between the scientists, it’s pretty obvious that they figured out early on that this wasn’t as deadly as the rest of the world thought.00;46;34;29 – 00;46;59;29
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. Was that is this path? It was a really influential report from Imperial College in London. And when you take those numbers and recalibrate them or. Or Sweden, we were supposed to have somewhere around 100,000 deaths in three months in 2020, and the actual result came to 6000.00;47;00;03 – 00;47;05;02
Johan Anderberg
So it was pretty obvious that all these projections were overblown.00;47;05;19 – 00;47;06;00
Eric R Olson
Yeah.00;47;07;01 – 00;47;27;05
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. But then, you know, the. The whole extra. The pandemic shifted and it was about it was not about keeping the health care system in check and it wasn’t about keeping people from dying. It was after well, it became about people should get COVID and this.00;47;27;27 – 00;47;30;20
Johan Anderberg
We’re like, this is impossible. There’s no way.00;47;34;17 – 00;47;57;01
Eric R Olson
So so their thinking was that if we if you let enough people get infected, that they would that it would create this kind of herd immunity effect that, you know, eventually, like I think in the book, he said at some point somebody calculated like 40% of the population would have some kind of exposure and that that would00;47;57;03 – 00;47;59;04
Eric R Olson
that would kind of be the end of the pandemic.00;47;59;25 – 00;48;16;19
Johan Anderberg
Right? Yeah, I’m wrong about that. It took a lot more people to. But what did happen was that Stockholm was never really stuck. It was really hard hit the first time around. Back then the numbers were much lower the second time around.00;48;16;19 – 00;48;39;22
Johan Anderberg
So what happened was that the pandemic shifted to other parts of Sweden, so there was definitely an immunity that protected the Swedish population after a while. Mm hmm. So. But they were, like, a little bit too optimistic about when this herd immunity would and would enter something.00;48;39;22 – 00;48;43;16
Johan Anderberg
And then the vaccine came and that sort of changed the whole. Yeah.00;48;44;20 – 00;48;56;03
Eric R Olson
And so that’s that’s sort of that sort of is the that’s sort of the end of your book. Right. Or the main narrative of your book is, okay, the vaccine comes along and that sort of the end of this experiment.00;48;57;20 – 00;49;13;14
Eric R Olson
Yeah. But did they do we, do we know that like, you know, in, from, from that I mean, it was, it wasn’t was it a whole year that we basically went without a vaccine? I mean I think it was the better part of a year did.00;49;13;14 – 00;49;28;03
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. I mean the vaccine came on November 9th I think in the U.K. That was like the first shot. But we didn’t get any of the doses until like the like for real until the spring 20, 21.00;49;28;03 – 00;49;28;28
Eric R Olson
So yeah.00;49;29;23 – 00;49;32;18
Johan Anderberg
That’s when I pretty much everyone started getting.00;49;33;04 – 00;49;54;26
Eric R Olson
Yeah. Well so is there, I mean is it, is, is there evidence that this, this strategy of just letting the the virus, letting COVID sort of course through the population that that was actually or not I shouldn’t say coarse through the population, but that that there was sort of this trying to have a more measured release of00;49;54;26 – 00;49;58;10
Eric R Olson
the virus through the population that that was actually effective.00;50;01;09 – 00;50;18;29
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. I mean, if you if you look at the excess deaths and the deaths through, but by COVID, as Sweden comes out, we will almost like it or actually in all ways count. In Sweden, it’s among the lowest in Europe and in the world.00;50;19;16 – 00;50;36;23
Johan Anderberg
There was actually a W.H.O. report came out today, I think Sweden and that corroborates that view as well, that some of the countries, countries that locked down were much harder hit and Germany was a that’s hard hit in the beginning.00;50;36;23 – 00;50;52;28
Johan Anderberg
And the Sweden all these the newspapers who were kind of pro lockdown, they wrote all these stories about Germany doing the right thing. And now Germany is worse off than Sweden. And like they’ve been masking kids and they shut schools.00;50;54;07 – 00;51;09;04
Johan Anderberg
So, I mean, I think the story here isn’t so much Sweden as the rest of the world, just having this weird policy experiment that didn’t succeed in. Yeah, yeah.00;51;10;00 – 00;51;24;11
Eric R Olson
Yeah. It it seems like, you know, you have all these different countries and in the US, like, you know, we’re such a big country. We have all these states that did different interventions to try to stop or mitigate the effects of the virus.00;51;24;11 – 00;51;43;20
Eric R Olson
But it seems like in the end, none of it really worked out well. And, you know, and then so then what do you look at? I guess you look at, you know, how the differential in how people how the economies were affected and was the cost the huge cost of these lockdowns and wearing masks and shutting things00;51;43;20 – 00;52;03;06
Eric R Olson
down is that was that that was that, you know, justified? Did it actually have to have an impact? So, I mean, do we know do we know that in terms of suite I mean, did Sweden come out of that come out of the pandemic in a better financial shape than other countries like.00;52;03;14 – 00;52;04;01
Johan Anderberg
Yeah, the.00;52;04;01 – 00;52;08;28
Eric R Olson
Nordic countries in particular, because that’s probably a good way to compare is to look at, you know.00;52;09;08 – 00;52;39;12
Johan Anderberg
Norway and I think all the Scandinavian countries came out really well, judging by economic studies. But I don’t know if it’s such a good way of measuring the toll the pandemic is or if just to translate this to like in the US, like say you have like a state that is very export oriented, then what you do00;52;39;13 – 00;52;54;29
Johan Anderberg
, that state doesn’t really matter for the economy. It’s like who buys our stuff? And Sweden is also a very export oriented economy. So like if people don’t buy like our cars or our Spotify services or whatever, then the economy will do bad.00;52;55;15 – 00;53;00;24
Johan Anderberg
And I guess tourist companies would have been really hard hit as well.00;53;01;03 – 00;53;01;26
Eric R Olson
So yeah.00;53;03;06 – 00;53;26;16
Johan Anderberg
And like I guess Norway was but did have had a pretty good economy throughout. But I mean their economies like based on oil so that their economies will be on the oil price. So I, I think the economy angle has always been a little bit stupid in my ears, actually.00;53;27;01 – 00;53;34;10
Eric R Olson
Uh huh, uh huh. So what do you think’s like a better measure of, you know, cost benefit?00;53;35;06 – 00;53;38;20
Johan Anderberg
I mean, I would like to read a study of like missed school days.00;53;39;05 – 00;53;39;16
Eric R Olson
Mhm.00;53;40;28 – 00;53;55;20
Johan Anderberg
Oh. And I mean public health in general. Teen depression. I guess the true cost will be seen like. Yeah. Many years from now.00;53;56;07 – 00;53;56;17
Eric R Olson
Yeah.00;53;56;29 – 00;53;59;27
Johan Anderberg
Especially when it came to really hard lockdown services.00;54;00;29 – 00;54;20;26
Eric R Olson
Yeah. Yeah I think. Yeah. I just read something this morning that someone looked at education as your educational attainment in math in particular, that kids who were in remote learning did like 30% worse than kids that were in that were still doing in-person school.00;54;21;01 – 00;54;33;21
Eric R Olson
They all did worse because, you know, they weren’t getting the same education that they would have gotten had there not been a pandemic. The remote learning was really bad in that sense. And I’m guessing the other. Yeah.00;54;34;01 – 00;54;36;26
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. And especially that for disadvantaged kids.00;54;37;12 – 00;54;38;24
Eric R Olson
Yes. Yeah.00;54;39;08 – 00;54;59;14
Johan Anderberg
I mean, I’m a writer and I can stay at home with my kids and teach them if we’re like, Yeah, but if your parents work at McDonalds or the Amazon, I mean and that’s actually really interesting because in Sweden there was left wing government throughout.00;55;00;25 – 00;55;20;01
Johan Anderberg
And it was actually seen as kind of a left wing thing to to not lock down. This is sort of it’s. But in the US, it was the opposite. And to me, that doesn’t make sense at all because I mean, yeah.00;55;20;07 – 00;55;37;20
Johan Anderberg
And I mean, if we had looked, I would have done like all rich suites. I would just go to like the mountain cabin and go skiing all day and teach my kids English in the afternoon. But, I mean, if you’re poor, you can’t do that.00;55;37;28 – 00;55;38;09
Johan Anderberg
And so.00;55;38;16 – 00;55;49;24
Eric R Olson
Yeah, no, I think that’s I think that’s definitely true. Yeah. This had kids kids who had parents who needed to go off to some kind of service job or something like that were really in a lot of trouble.00;55;52;15 – 00;56;04;13
Eric R Olson
Yeah. I mean, we, we had a, my wife and I, we, we have, you know, two young kids and we we were able to do that as well. We’re able to we have jobs that were flexible to to be able to stay at home.00;56;05;11 – 00;56;15;18
Eric R Olson
Not to say it didn’t and it wasn’t an impact, but, you know, probably less so than someone, you know, making ends meet, making ends meet in a service type job.00;56;17;27 – 00;56;21;07
Johan Anderberg
Where they’re happy to go back to school because it’s good. Oh, yeah.00;56;21;21 – 00;56;36;28
Eric R Olson
Oh, yeah, yeah. It was. Yeah, my, my. Well, I have one that’s, that’s in daycare, not in school, but my, my older son was, was so happy to be going back and just had a remote school was just, you know, liked it at first.00;56;37;09 – 00;56;55;17
Eric R Olson
But then when you’re doing that for, you know, nine months is that’s pretty tough. And, you know, with the younger kid, I think, you know, he was a toddler through it. Preschool age now. And I do think it probably did have some impact on his language development.00;56;55;17 – 00;57;14;02
Eric R Olson
I think he’s a little bit behind there, just not being around other kids that because we pulled him out of daycare, just not being around other kids, because I think I think there’s some peer pressure with language development that when they’re around kids that maybe are advancing a little bit faster, that they want to catch up.00;57;14;17 – 00;57;23;18
Eric R Olson
But when you’re not around other kids that are kind of closer to your age, then you find I mean, I don’t have studies to prove that, but that’s that’s my thinking about it.00;57;24;29 – 00;57;41;03
Johan Anderberg
I think language is very associated with like your peers because I have a very thick Swiss Southern Swedish accent of my kids and like, they speak like they’re their friends. I mean, they don’t care about the way I speak.00;57;42;06 – 00;57;59;05
Eric R Olson
It’s like. Yeah, yeah. I think there’s some good evidence for that in terms of Yeah. Of, of kids being very influenced by their peers. And I don’t know specifically about language, but I know about other things. That’s true.00;57;59;05 – 00;58;01;29
Eric R Olson
So I don’t know what language would be any different.00;58;03;14 – 00;58;03;26
Johan Anderberg
Yeah.00;58;04;13 – 00;58;25;06
Eric R Olson
So your book was like really, you really had an intimate view of sort of what was going on during this, you know, early pandemic. And it almost reads it’s like almost like a thriller, kind of, you know, you’re like sitting at the meeting with all of these people.00;58;25;11 – 00;58;36;08
Eric R Olson
How did you get access to all this information, in particular their emails? I mean, you had all these email exchanges and everything. Is that public record or how did you. Oh, okay.00;58;37;06 – 00;59;00;18
Johan Anderberg
And, um, Sweden has like very liberal Freedom of Information Act. So that’s one reason why I started writing these books, because I knew there was going to be some religious stuff in there and that it almost I knew it also would take like a book project to go through because it was like a total like 10,000 emails00;59;00;19 – 00;59;21;12
Johan Anderberg
something so to couple of months to go through it all and, and yeah. So they were like very open. The funny thing is of people like if you work at like in the government offices, it’s in touch with the media.00;59;21;19 – 00;59;30;07
Johan Anderberg
Then you, then you know, you’re supposed to write this kind of stuff in an email, but these people like no one cared about these people.00;59;31;03 – 00;59;32;02
Eric R Olson
Right. Right.00;59;32;27 – 00;59;37;22
Johan Anderberg
So they had like no idea that whatever would one day write a book about them.00;59;40;02 – 00;59;55;08
Eric R Olson
Now, did you also interview some of these people? Like what? Anders Tegnell. That’s the that’s the state epidemiologist for Sweden. And then there’s this other there’s this whole cast of characters. Did you did you get to talk to them in person as well?00;59;56;24 – 01;00;13;16
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. Like the funny thing was talking. A lot of people were really open. But we understand now the least. But he did this press conference every day. So if you just stood there and stood in line for like an hour, then you could ask five or ten questions.01;00;13;19 – 01;00;38;28
Johan Anderberg
It was kind of funny. Like everyone asks questions about like the pandemic or what happened that day, or like whether or not Denmark closed its borders and bubble. But I always ask something about something that happened like in the seventies or 80 that I really like all these books and all these studies and they’re like, You still01;00;38;28 – 01;00;48;10
Johan Anderberg
believe what you wrote the last article in 1998 then? So it’s kind of weird that like, I lived in like a parallel universe for yeah.01;00;50;11 – 01;01;10;14
Eric R Olson
One thing that struck me also is just that it seemed like the Swedish government for at least for that first year, the pandemic just sort of handed the reins over to to Anders Tegnell. Yeah. And that that was pretty in pretty stark contrast to what was happening in the U.S. with Trump.01;01;10;20 – 01;01;34;20
Eric R Olson
And what I mean is that is that seemed typical for the Swedish people that that they have that much trust in and scientists. I feel like the U.S. there’s there’s at least among the conservatives in our country, they’re very skeptical of of scientists and scientific experts.01;01;37;03 – 01;02;01;12
Johan Anderberg
I mean, Swedes, I guess, are pretty trusting of scientists, like when normally 97% of all kids think they’re all taking all their shots. Yeah. Or their parents give them results. And but when it comes to politicians, that’s like really interesting because we have a habit of not electing very charismatic politicians.01;02;01;12 – 01;02;20;07
Johan Anderberg
So most of them are pretty low key American politicians. And especially Stephan, the man who was the prime minister at that time is the Labor Party have this. They were like in a crisis and pretty much no one wanted the spot as the leader of the party.01;02;20;08 – 01;02;47;07
Johan Anderberg
So we had to be convinced. And even though he was the Prime Minister for eight years, he never seemed to enjoy it at all. So it would have been very hard for him to take charge. So that’s definitely a little part of the puzzle is if it had been like a more like another kind of politician, then01;02;48;05 – 01;03;07;23
Johan Anderberg
maybe a more more of a populist politician probably would have taken the reins a little bit. Mm hmm. Or in from the constitutional reasons, because there were some really strong sentences in the Constitution that bars many of those things.01;03;07;23 – 01;03;24;20
Johan Anderberg
That was we will allow Canada first, but the US Constitution allows it. I’m not I’m not an expert on the U.S. Constitution, but the physicians have the ability to block them. It is just things like that.01;03;25;05 – 01;03;51;05
Eric R Olson
Well, yeah, that’s interesting. I’m not a legal expert either, but I, I think I mean, I do have some interest in civil liberties. I think generally speaking, there’s the executive, whether you’re talking about it, the national, the state or the city level usually has some kind of emergency powers that they can enact, you know, lockdowns or things01;03;51;05 – 01;04;06;09
Eric R Olson
to protect the public health. So I think that’s where that came from. And but, in fact, a lot of those lockdowns and and executive orders, as they would call them, have been challenged in court and are are, are.01;04;06;10 – 01;04;26;01
Eric R Olson
And they’ve usually been struck down by the courts because they can’t they’re they’re really supposed to be for a limited amount of time when you need a, you know, an executive who can just get things done quickly. But if if there’s going to be a law that’s going to persist, then it then it’s supposed to go through01;04;26;01 – 01;04;40;21
Eric R Olson
the legislature. So, in fact, a lot of those things have been and that that actually happened where I’m at in New York, they they struck down the governor’s mandate about masks as unconstitutional. Oh, yeah.01;04;40;24 – 01;04;58;27
Johan Anderberg
Because we have this debate now in Sweden, like after the pandemic, because everyone found out that there were no emergency powers in the Constitution. And it has to be like a war for both to be valid. So there’s this debate about whether or not we should have those and.01;05;00;04 – 01;05;02;19
Johan Anderberg
But I think this pandemic shows that it’s pretty good to not have them.01;05;06;23 – 01;05;29;04
Eric R Olson
Well, there’s definitely a thing that, you know, having studied that a little bit in the U.S. with the president, that once you grant an executive powers, they’re very unwilling to give them up. Yeah. Even there even their successor is unwilling to give up those those powers, because, of course, they think, well, I’m going to do something great01;05;29;04 – 01;05;43;05
Eric R Olson
with them. You know, that’s that’s that’s the old story of, you know, increasing so so in the U.S.. Like the president has become increasingly powerful. There was always supposed to be a checks and balances against that. But, you know, so I think that’s smart.01;05;43;05 – 01;05;49;22
Eric R Olson
I mean, I think that’s right. And I don’t know if that, you know, we have. Mm hmm.01;05;50;14 – 01;06;14;26
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. I think it’s very difficult for a politician, some authorities, to try to create, like, the best public health scenario in situations like this, too. Because what you saw in a lot of U.S. states, actually, and in England was that people started like locking down or hunkering down even before they were forced to.01;06;15;03 – 01;06;37;13
Johan Anderberg
So that just shows that people are rational when it comes to their public health and that it might be better to just to let people have that power themselves. Because if you just make a thought experiment, but you have like a virus that has like a 10% mortality, we probably don’t need a law to keep people at01;06;37;13 – 01;06;37;23
Johan Anderberg
home.01;06;40;03 – 01;06;58;25
Eric R Olson
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that was true, at least for me personally. I mean, even before schools shut down, I had kept my son back from school because I would just I just I didn’t I was being you know, I was having the phrase we heard a lot was abundance of caution.01;06;58;25 – 01;07;10;08
Eric R Olson
It was like, I don’t know what’s going on, but but I think at some point, you know, everyone was looking at Italy and going, wow, this is this is terrible. You know, it’s happening. There’s really high case fatality rate.01;07;10;08 – 01;07;31;25
Eric R Olson
And but, you know, people that I say follow on Twitter, you know, smart people. One of them is his name is Mark Cheng. Cheng Easy. He’s actually been on this podcast. He’s a he’s works in like neuroscience, but he’s, you know, smart guy background in physics.01;07;31;25 – 01;07;44;07
Eric R Olson
And he was saying early on, you know, all this is overblown. And really through the whole pandemic, he’s saying this is overblown. This is calling it social contagion and stuff like that. And I you know, I didn’t know what to make of that.01;07;44;07 – 01;08;00;25
Eric R Olson
But over time, you know, he’s been proven correct. So, you know, is it is it that he knew all along or, you know, or is it just there is a 50 over 50 chance that he was right and he happened to, you know, that just sort of bear it out over time.01;08;00;25 – 01;08;13;23
Eric R Olson
That’s that’s what I kind of wonder about. I wonder about with the the Swedish epidemiologist. It’s just like, well, they they took a stance which was brave. But what if they what if they’d been wrong? You know.01;08;14;16 – 01;08;33;05
Johan Anderberg
They were a little bit wrong, to be honest, because they definitely underestimated the risks, but only by a factor of like two, whereas the rest of the world probably overestimated by a factor of ten something. So yeah, according to these predictions.01;08;34;02 – 01;08;47;07
Johan Anderberg
So they were close to the truth. But you’re right, it could have been, could have. If it had gone the other way, they would have. But I guess my book would have been even more interesting.01;08;48;18 – 01;08;51;25
Eric R Olson
Yeah, it would have been a story of failure.01;08;52;19 – 01;09;15;01
Johan Anderberg
But that would have been the story of the century in Sweden. But it’s like how how they just like didn’t do anything as a people. But yeah, there’s a lot we’re only 2 million people here. And I know that these numbers like 6000 a year, it sounds very little, but they’re only 10 million or so.01;09;15;01 – 01;09;17;04
Johan Anderberg
You have to like scale up by a factor of 30.01;09;17;08 – 01;09;38;15
Eric R Olson
Yeah, well that’s, that’s one thing I, I mean, that’s kind of my takeaway from this pandemic. It just seems like there’s so much variability in where you live, how old you are, you know, maybe your your ethnicity, like all of these risk factors, you know, and everyone has to evaluate their own risk.01;09;38;15 – 01;09;52;11
Eric R Olson
And we’re all terrible at it, you know, like like we know this. We know people are terrible at estimating their own risk. Everybody thinks it’s more dangerous to fly in airplanes, for example, than to then to drive when it’s exactly the opposite.01;09;52;11 – 01;09;52;19
Eric R Olson
Right?01;09;53;24 – 01;10;14;11
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. And the media has been really bad when. Comes to explain the risks involved here because yeah, when you ask Americans and British people like what their own risk is, it’s like way overblown. And they, like especially young people, overestimate their risk by a lot.01;10;14;22 – 01;10;20;23
Johan Anderberg
And they underestimate the risk of old people because it is really dangerous for old people.01;10;21;01 – 01;10;30;08
Eric R Olson
Yes. And those with preexisting conditions, too, that are, you know, already frail.01;10;31;20 – 01;10;54;20
Johan Anderberg
But there was this study being made during the first year. The pandemic went about. They asked people in Europe and in the US about how many people that they thought had died. And in Britain, a third of the people thought that this as many people as lived in Wales had died.01;10;54;28 – 01;11;01;09
Eric R Olson
So which is like how many people? How many people?01;11;02;17 – 01;11;18;20
Johan Anderberg
I think it’s like five or 6 million or something like that. Yeah. And so in most in most countries, they had overestimated the deaths. How many fold or more? So that just that just shows you what a weird perspective people have.01;11;18;21 – 01;11;19;00
Eric R Olson
Yeah.01;11;19;24 – 01;11;20;10
Johan Anderberg
On the pandemic.01;11;21;18 – 01;11;41;14
Eric R Olson
Yeah. And I think in the US it was they predicted it could be millions. So. One thing that was really interesting about your book is like, okay, we have this peek inside the, the worlds of, you know, state epidemiologists and and their adjacent peers.01;11;41;23 – 01;12;03;29
Eric R Olson
But also it’s it’s it’s really kind of a look inside of epidemiology as a whole. And it seems like there, you know, there’s only maybe a couple of handfuls of these people that are really making these make it not making policy but but but putting out papers and things that inform the policy.01;12;04;21 – 01;12;21;06
Eric R Olson
So yeah, early on, yeah. So it seemed like all these people kind of know each other. So what like what is, you know, what is the connection with Sweden in terms of like the rest of the the world’s epidemiology or public health community?01;12;21;06 – 01;12;27;18
Eric R Olson
I mean, they’re they’re fairly prominent compared to then than what you might think for a country of 10 million people.01;12;28;08 – 01;12;48;03
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. It’s that was also a coincidence because the guy who hired on this thing. No. His name is John Cusack. And he had been like somewhat of a big guy in this field. And he he may he sort of was the one that made the European CDC visitations in Stockholm.01;12;48;03 – 01;13;03;07
Johan Anderberg
So all these scientists were based in Stockholm. And he was the first head scientist of of the European CDC. So he had like a lot of power in that world. And he knew, like, all these people. And he made these predictions.01;13;03;07 – 01;13;22;00
Johan Anderberg
And I mean, he’s pretty blunt about what he thinks about them. He thinks they’re like hacks pretty much. So that was also kind of lucky that just these few people have that insight into this college that made this, you know, terrible report.01;13;22;00 – 01;13;33;17
Johan Anderberg
One has to say. Yeah, and I mean, people get wrong all the time. But to be that wrong and to be that influential, it’s a really bad condition.01;13;34;08 – 01;13;51;22
Eric R Olson
Yeah. And to to bring it back to the media as well. Of course, you know, like let’s say you put out a prediction about, you know, you put out a model and you say, well, these this is the range of values, but say it’s 100, you know, 100,000 or 400,000 can die.01;13;51;22 – 01;14;11;08
Eric R Olson
Of course, they’re going to latch on to 400,000, that number or whatever, you know. Yeah. So I think the media has a lot of responsibility or culpability, I should say, in this as well. And they’re just always latching on to that most like dramatic, you know, number, when in fact, I don’t know.01;14;11;08 – 01;14;28;11
Eric R Olson
Yeah, I didn’t I didn’t actually look at I never looked at that paper about that. We’re referring to Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, London. And early on down there, he he made these predictions about how many people would die and was completely proven wrong.01;14;28;19 – 01;14;47;27
Eric R Olson
So so I guess at the, you know, having studied this for a while. But what like how bad was it really? I mean, how how many people did we actually how many people died as a result of COVID?01;14;49;23 – 01;15;11;11
Johan Anderberg
It was it was very bad. It was it’s probably the worst epidemic in 100 years. And. I’ve seen, like some people say that it was on par with the Spanish Spanish flu, but that that’s completely not correct. And yeah, the Spanish flu was many, many times worse.01;15;11;12 – 01;15;34;25
Johan Anderberg
So that’s also one of these things that are difficult to talk about in terms of the risk. I mean, even though it’s the worst thing in years there that most people probably have been at high risk of of some of the things in their lives.01;15;35;21 – 01;15;53;10
Johan Anderberg
And I know that there was a study done for the type to compare it to driving a car x miles. And I mean, I think that’s a really good way of framing it. And of course, if you’re old, it might be as driving a car, you know, just a thousand miles.01;15;53;27 – 01;16;01;21
Johan Anderberg
But but for young people who have to drive a whole lot. Yeah.01;16;02;09 – 01;16;06;03
Eric R Olson
I haven’t seen that. Yeah, I haven’t seen that comparison. And that’s kind of an interesting one.01;16;06;24 – 01;16;07;26
Johan Anderberg
Jolene Knight is.01;16;10;07 – 01;16;29;27
Eric R Olson
At Stanford and he was a vocal critic of some of the earlier estimates, I believe. Yeah, about about prevalence and like infection. Fatality rate, case fatality rate. He said it was the way it was being way it was way too high.01;16;30;25 – 01;16;47;02
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. And that’s like he was one of the reasons why I was also interested in this intake, because I kind of knew of him before. A lot of doctor friends of mine and some some friends of my they had talked about him for a while.01;16;47;02 – 01;17;08;27
Johan Anderberg
And so so he was kind of a known quantity. And it’s kind of interesting to see all these like pretty prominent scientists that have like other views and suddenly you don’t see them very much in the media. So if you if you had like a prior understanding of some scientific things, then it’s, like, easier to have your01;17;08;27 – 01;17;09;12
Johan Anderberg
own opinion.01;17;10;12 – 01;17;34;06
Eric R Olson
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So one thing I just thought of is, you know, if if vaccines hadn’t come along in, you know, in Sweden and actually in the U.S., too, in spring of 2021, what do you think would have happened in Sweden in terms of the policies and such?01;17;34;16 – 01;17;43;22
Eric R Olson
What would this experiment have continued, or was it already kind of coming to an end in terms of shutting things down, shut down schools, not wearing masks, those sorts of things?01;17;45;14 – 01;17;58;26
Johan Anderberg
I mean, I think it would have continued because I mean, it is a little bit what happened out. I took part in a seminar with some epidemiologist and then one of the people in charge who’s she’s not in my book.01;17;59;13 – 01;18;27;07
Johan Anderberg
She has been just taken over. And she she said that it wasn’t so much the vaccines, but the homegrown wave that really killed the pandemic. So. Mm hmm. Something like that would have happened. Mm hmm. And I guess, yeah, I thought it was interesting insight, because I’ve never really heard anyone say that before, but it was actually01;18;28;28 – 01;18;30;13
Johan Anderberg
a natural link to it.01;18;31;11 – 01;18;37;20
Eric R Olson
Right. So. So she’s saying. And what’s her name? Do you know? Do you remember.01;18;39;19 – 01;18;40;08
Johan Anderberg
This? Yeah.01;18;40;25 – 01;18;56;05
Eric R Olson
Okay. So the idea would be that because Omicron is more contagious, but less has like is less severe, that people would have gained immunity anyways over time.01;18;57;01 – 01;18;58;10
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. And also that without.01;18;58;10 – 01;18;59;25
Eric R Olson
A big enough death toll.01;18;59;26 – 01;19;03;29
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. And also that the people who got it even though they had been vaccinated.01;19;04;15 – 01;19;05;14
Eric R Olson
Right. Right.01;19;06;19 – 01;19;28;13
Johan Anderberg
So they actually the window where the vaccine was like really powerful and shortens two or a year and. Well, but also I think I would have thought that the vaccine would be more powerful because the early studies indicate that they are super efficient.01;19;28;21 – 01;19;46;22
Johan Anderberg
Mm hmm. Whereas the normal vaccine, maybe they don’t if they are used for it. But to answer your question, I think that is what would have happened, that it would have been like a wave and then another wave and then longer and I guess the rest of the world would have stopped looking down.01;19;47;25 – 01;19;51;28
Johan Anderberg
Would they have continued like viruses here? Pretty unlikely.01;19;52;29 – 01;19;54;09
Eric R Olson
Yeah. Yeah.01;19;54;11 – 01;19;57;07
Johan Anderberg
Or maybe China is still doing it, so.01;19;58;24 – 01;20;17;15
Eric R Olson
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I think they’ve had some recent lockdowns where they just, like, shut down the whole city. Yeah, one thing that I’ve been thinking about is, are we any have we actually, like, learned anything from these past couple of years?01;20;18;09 – 01;20;36;26
Eric R Olson
You know, if another pandemic came along, which it probably well, from everything I understand about, you know, origins of of these viruses, I mean, do you think that we will be any better prepared? Do we actually learn anything about what we should do and not do?01;20;36;26 – 01;20;56;09
Eric R Olson
Because I think when I talk to people in the US, they tend to think that the measures that we took were effective and and did something to kind of prevent deaths. And I at this point, I’m not I’m not clear about that at all.01;20;56;10 – 01;20;57;27
Eric R Olson
I think it’s questionable.01;21;00;04 – 01;21;24;29
Johan Anderberg
I think you’re totally right, though. It’s very questionable that they’re having effect. And I think everyone will understand that eventually. Mm hmm. I think we have to dial down the conflict a little bit, and then then there will be like a new wave of journalists, because there are many journalists who haven’t touched the subject and those of01;21;24;29 – 01;21;43;03
Johan Anderberg
the people that have to write like the American book about this. Like and I go through what really happened, and I think my book is like a start that it’s kind of weird how Sweden was portrayed as this reckless nation.01;21;43;17 – 01;22;06;00
Johan Anderberg
And they like all these stories about how many people that actually died in Sweden. And now, now after two years, we actually have fewer deaths. And that’s like that’s a very good control group. I think if you want to start digging deeper into what actually happened here, and I think it’s a tale about the group thing more01;22;06;00 – 01;22;08;23
Johan Anderberg
than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Mm hmm.01;22;09;18 – 01;22;34;03
Eric R Olson
Mm hmm. One thing that that you highlighted in the book and that I definitely noticed is that and a reason that I haven’t really I mean, I could have done a bunch of podcast episodes on COVID, and I just kind of avoided it was it just became so politicized in the United States about, you know, should you01;22;34;04 – 01;22;43;12
Eric R Olson
what you should do or not do? And it really became conservatives against liberals in terms of, you know, interventions and things like that.01;22;43;12 – 01;22;46;28
Johan Anderberg
So but I think.01;22;48;18 – 01;23;00;07
Eric R Olson
My concern my concern is just that if there was another pandemic, we just it would end up we’d just be back on the lines of, you know, the political divide in terms of of do this, don’t do that.01;23;01;08 – 01;23;17;12
Eric R Olson
So I just hope that, you know, maybe we can learn something from Sweden in terms of how to take a more rational scientific approach to do it. But I don’t know about I think I think Sweden maybe it’s better that way than the U.S..01;23;17;12 – 01;23;28;10
Eric R Olson
I think the U.S. is a little bit just I don’t know, it’s just more polarized, I think. I don’t know. I don’t know. Put it Sweden’s political system very well or parties or anything like that.01;23;28;10 – 01;23;48;26
Johan Anderberg
But I mean, I’m pretty hopeful about the US. It always turns out pretty well the yeah I think and I think here it’s going to be the same thing that like when you think about other really politicized issues and like say like the Iraq war, at least here as well as we I think in the US too01;23;48;26 – 01;24;05;14
Johan Anderberg
, like people can admit that they were wrong about this and wrong about that. And we’ve had other things in Sweden like whether it’s not whether or not to join the euro. And people have been pretty open about the I was wrong about that even though it was very harsh at the time.01;24;05;14 – 01;24;20;06
Johan Anderberg
And I think that will happen to the country that people will just be a little more chill about it, reading the data and admitting that they were wrong. I mean, you seem to have made that German yourself.01;24;21;19 – 01;24;21;26
Eric R Olson
That.01;24;22;19 – 01;24;25;09
Johan Anderberg
You were like very provoked. I don’t agree with you.01;24;27;22 – 01;24;51;01
Eric R Olson
Yeah, that’s a good point. I, I definitely is the kind of person that would always I mean, I’ve always had a huge amount of respect for, for example, for the CDC. And, you know, I always thought that I always thought of them as sort of an apolitical, neutral, you know, entity with very high standards for evidence and01;24;51;01 – 01;25;11;29
Eric R Olson
things like that. But I just I think I’m more of the the I’ve come around to this idea that that at least with this pandemic, it’s been more of a political political decisions are being made more by political considerations than scientific ones.01;25;13;05 – 01;25;32;11
Johan Anderberg
Yeah, but, and I think all in science, but because they are just like any kinds of jobs, they have office politics, the people you want to be friends with, the people you want to avoid. And like, I mean, they’re they’re not insulated from that kind of human behavior.01;25;33;01 – 01;25;56;15
Eric R Olson
Yeah, I do think that the CDC currently has it right in that they issue these guidelines that are on a by like per county level in the U.S. So they say like if look, if you’re they have different levels of intervention, they recommend for how many cases are in your, you know, the case.01;25;57;10 – 01;26;13;10
Eric R Olson
What would you call that? The prevalence of new cases or something like that. There, you know, they you know, for example, if it’s very low number of new cases, then they they’re not recommending mass it. It’s very high.01;26;13;10 – 01;26;25;14
Eric R Olson
Then they’d say like, yes, let’s do mass, because we know that they’re not super effective. But well, we’ll take any we’ll do any intervention to keep people out of hospitals at this point, because, you know, there’s all.01;26;25;15 – 01;26;47;05
Johan Anderberg
These like, how sure can you be that those numbers are accurate? It seems like very based on how many people that actually go test themselves. And you really be sure that it’s much worse in one county than another because people have like suggested these things between they never, never happen.01;26;47;05 – 01;26;48;17
Johan Anderberg
So that’s why I wonder.01;26;48;17 – 01;27;08;18
Eric R Olson
But I mean, that’s a great question. Yeah, I don’t know. I would have to look and see how they’re determining that. So you’re bringing up the point that it could be you know, there could be some self-selection going on where people are selection bias, where people are going, you know, they’re counting cases of people that are going01;27;08;18 – 01;27;30;27
Eric R Olson
that are sick. So I hope that they’re doing some kind of randomized testing. You know, they’re just picking a random sample of people and determining it that way. But I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. What I do think is right is the way that they’re looking at it by area on a pretty, pretty granular level01;27;30;27 – 01;27;34;19
Eric R Olson
and not just making these blanket recommendations for like the whole state.01;27;35;28 – 01;27;36;07
Johan Anderberg
Yeah.01;27;36;28 – 01;28;00;13
Eric R Olson
So that’s, that’s a bit better. But and then they’ve, they’ve pretty much ditched the mass requirements. But as we mentioned, as we talked about before we started recording in New York City, only not even New York State, they still have this mask requirement for 2 to 4 year olds, which makes no sense because they’ve been the then01;28;00;13 – 01;28;09;13
Eric R Olson
the sort of least the group at least risk for any kind of severe COVID complications. So it’s very bizarre.01;28;11;05 – 01;28;26;20
Johan Anderberg
It is very disheartening to see those images from the US. Yeah, get the test from wearing masks and I really hope they re reevaluate those things.01;28;27;07 – 01;28;45;29
Eric R Olson
Yeah. Yeah me too. But I think that’s another that’s another situation where you go, you know, you come around to this idea that this a lot of this is driven by politics and politicians wanting to look like they’re doing something.01;28;46;17 – 01;29;05;29
Eric R Olson
And when you look at the actual science, you just go, it doesn’t make sense. This intervention doesn’t make any sense. So why do we still have it? And and now, you know, bringing it back to your book, we’re talking about following the herd or not, the herd is actually ditching masks at this point.01;29;06;13 – 01;29;20;05
Eric R Olson
And so our mayor in New York City, Eric Adams, is not following the herd and doing it, doing something that no one else is doing. So, I don’t know, maybe he’ll be proven right at some point, but I don’t think so.01;29;20;06 – 01;29;22;01
Eric R Olson
I don’t think the science is there.01;29;23;08 – 01;29;27;25
Johan Anderberg
What is New York taking such like its own path here?01;29;29;29 – 01;29;47;28
Eric R Olson
I think I think part of it and I’ve talked about this a bit with my wife, but, you know, we were one of the areas in the US that was hit pretty hard initially. And New York is very unusual in the United States in terms of density, population density.01;29;47;29 – 01;30;06;07
Eric R Olson
And we have a lot of people here who are, you know, have a lot of health issues that are kind of living in marginalized communities. So we got hit pretty hard. And so I think that’s made people very cautious about, you know, yeah, removing restrictions.01;30;06;07 – 01;30;21;17
Eric R Olson
But, you know, that mask mandate for 2 to 4 year olds I’m talking about came about in December of 2021. I mean, this was not March of 2020. It was like the end of 2021. So it’s very that’s it’s the whole thing’s very bizarre.01;30;23;14 – 01;30;24;22
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. And I could.01;30;25;24 – 01;30;42;21
Eric R Olson
I could go on about that for an hour, but that’s a good place to wrap up. And so your hand is there. Where’s the best place for people to find you online? And yeah, let’s start with that.01;30;43;15 – 01;30;47;17
Johan Anderberg
Yeah, my Twitter is at 100 of one word.01;30;48;11 – 01;30;48;21
Eric R Olson
Okay.01;30;49;11 – 01;30;51;07
Johan Anderberg
Yeah, okay. Great, great.01;30;52;03 – 01;31;05;01
Eric R Olson
Great. Well, we’ll add a link to that so people can can find you. And then when is the. A heard book coming out in the US or is it already? I was a little confused about that in.01;31;05;11 – 01;31;24;28
Johan Anderberg
Two weeks throughout the US and but things official. Yes you can read it on Kindle already because it’s often a screen so you can if you have that and probably other other similar services that I don’t know about.01;31;25;08 – 01;31;41;23
Eric R Olson
Yeah, I looked on Amazon and I was like, Oh, you can buy this today if you want. So yeah, if people are interested. Anybody who’s interested in epidemiology that once, you know, like I said, an inside peek into this world of epidemiology during this global pandemic.01;31;41;23 – 01;31;52;00
Eric R Olson
It’s a really great read and really learned a lot. So so thanks for writing it. And yeah, I think we’ll end there.01;31;53;05 – 01;31;53;23
Johan Anderberg
Thanks for having me.01;39;39;04 – 01;39;58;05
Eric R Olson
This this group of Swedish epidemiologists. I mean, how did they know? How did they know what they were doing was right? Or did they just like. Was it just kind of faith or. You know, I mean, it takes a lot of of of strength, of will to kind of oppose everything that’s going on around you.01;39;58;05 – 01;40;04;08
Eric R Olson
So is it just come down to personality or, you know, what what was the difference there?01;40;05;29 – 01;40;30;02
Johan Anderberg
I think personality is an important part of it. Mm hmm. Well, when I needed to know who was in charge when he was hired to the Public Health Authority the first time his mentor be like that, he was so unfazed and so on that he didn’t really care about what people thought of him.01;40;30;07 – 01;40;58;22
Johan Anderberg
Know, he was he was not like a political human being. So I guess a lot of other scientists, he would have just felt the need to do what everyone else did. And in Denmark and Norway, the scientist there kind of wanted to do the Swedish path, but they were overrun by their politicians and they didn’t really make01;40;58;24 – 01;41;20;03
Johan Anderberg
a big fuss about it in the media or anything. So like, I guess the personality is one part, but they also like judging from the all these emails I’ve read between the signs, it’s pretty obvious that they figured out early on that this wasn’t as deadly as the rest of the world thought.01;41;21;12 – 01;41;46;12
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. Was that is this path? It was a really influential report from Imperial College in London. And when you take those numbers and recalibrate them or. Or Sweden, we were supposed to have somewhere around 100,000 deaths in three months in 2020, and the actual result came to 6000.01;41;46;14 – 01;41;51;13
Johan Anderberg
So it was pretty obvious that all these projections were overblown.01;41;52;00 – 01;41;52;11
Eric R Olson
Yeah.01;41;53;12 – 01;42;11;28
Johan Anderberg
Yeah. But then, you know, the the whole story of the pandemic shifted and it was about it was not about keeping the health care system in check. And it wasn’t about keeping people from dying. It was after well, it became about how people should get COVID.01;42;12;24 – 01;42;17;08
Johan Anderberg
And these scientists were like, this is impossible. There’s no way with.01;42;21;00 – 01;42;43;14
Eric R Olson
So. So their thinking was that if we if you let enough people get infected, that they would that it would create this kind of herd immunity effect that, you know, eventually, like I think in the book, he said at some point somebody calculated like 40% of the population would have some kind of exposure and that that would01;42;43;16 – 01;42;45;17
Eric R Olson
that would kind of be the end of the pandemic.01;42;46;08 – 01;43;03;02
Johan Anderberg
Right. Yeah, I’m wrong about that. It took a lot more people to. But well, what did happen was that Stockholm was never really stuck. It was really hard hit the first time around. Back then the numbers were much lower the second time around.01;43;03;02 – 01;43;26;05
Johan Anderberg
So what happened was that the pandemic shifted to other parts of Sweden, so there was definitely an immunity that protected the Swedish population after a while. Mm hmm. So. But they were, like, a little bit too optimistic about when this the herd immunity would and would enter something.01;43;26;05 – 01;43;29;29
Johan Anderberg
And then the vaccine came and that sort of changed the whole. Yeah.01;48;10;05 – 01;48;28;03
Eric R Olson
If another pandemic came along, which it probably well, from everything I understand about, you know, origins of of these viruses, I mean, do you think that we will be any better prepared? Do we actually learn anything about what we should do and not do?01;48;28;03 – 01;48;47;16
Eric R Olson
Because I think when I talk to people in the US, they tend to think that the measures that we took were effective and and did something to kind of prevent deaths. And I at this point, I’m not I’m not clear about that at all.01;48;47;16 – 01;48;49;04
Eric R Olson
I think it’s questionable.01;48;51;09 – 01;49;15;08
Johan Anderberg
I think you’re totally right, though. It’s very questionable that they had any effect. And I think everyone will understand that eventually. Mm hmm. I it we have to dial down the conflict a little bit, and then then there will be like a new wave of journalists, because there are many journalists who haven’t touched the subject.01;49;15;08 – 01;49;34;10
Johan Anderberg
And those are the people that have to write, like the American Book about this, like. And I go through what really happened, and I think my book is like a start that it’s kind of weird how Sweden was portrayed as this reckless nation.01;49;34;24 – 01;49;57;05
Johan Anderberg
And they like all these stories about how many people that actually died in Sweden. And now, now after two years, we actually have fewer deaths. And that’s like that’s a very good control group. I think if you want to start digging deeper into what actually happened here now, I think it’s a tale of a group thing more01;49;57;05 – 01;49;59;28
Johan Anderberg
than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Mm hmm.01;50;00;24 – 01;50;25;09
Eric R Olson
Mm hmm. One thing that that you highlighted in the book and that I’ve definitely noticed is that and a reason that I haven’t really I mean, I could have done a bunch of podcast episodes on COVID, and I just kind of avoided it was it just became so politicized in the United States about, you know, should you01;50;25;09 – 01;50;34;16
Eric R Olson
what you should do or not do? And it really became conservatives against liberals in terms of, you know, interventions and things like that.01;50;34;16 – 01;50;38;03
Johan Anderberg
So but I think.01;50;39;22 – 01;50;51;10
Eric R Olson
My concern my concern is just that if there was another pandemic, we just it would end up we’d just be back on the lines of, you know, the political divide in terms of, oh, do this, don’t do that.01;50;52;10 – 01;51;08;17
Eric R Olson
So I just hope that, you know, maybe we can learn something from Sweden in terms of how to take a more rational scientific approach to do it. But I don’t know about I think I think Sweden maybe it’s better that way than the U.S..01;51;08;18 – 01;51;19;16
Eric R Olson
I think the U.S. is a little bit just I don’t know, it’s just more polarized, I think. I don’t know. I don’t know. Put it Sweden’s political system very well or parties or anything like that.01;51;19;16 – 01;51;40;06
Johan Anderberg
But I mean, I’m pretty hopeful about the US. It always turns out pretty well in the end, I think, and I think here it’s going to be the same thing that like when you think about other really politicized issues like say like the Iraq war, at least here as well as I think in the US too, like01;51;40;06 – 01;51;56;17
Johan Anderberg
people can admit that they were wrong about this and wrong about that. And we’ve had other things in Sweden like whether it’s not whether or not to join the euro. And people have been pretty open about the I was wrong about that even though it was very harsh at the time.01;51;56;17 – 01;52;08;13
Johan Anderberg
And I think that will happen too with COVID, that people will just be a little bit more chill about it, reading the data and admitting that they were wrong.