Answer from Sweden Covid-19 Anders Tegnell The scientist loses confidence among people

Photographer: Anders Wiklund / AFP / Getty Images

The chief architect of Sweden’s controversial response to the pandemic is losing the trust of people who are supposed to follow his advice, even the nation’s monarch showed his disapproval.

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist and main proponent of an anti-blocking strategy in the country, saw his support decline 13 points in a poll released on Thursday, to 59% of respondents. Confidence in his employer, the Swedish Public Health Agency, fell to 52% from 68% in October, according to the Ipsos and Dagens Nyheter survey.

“Confidence is in a downward spiral,” said Nicklas Kallebring, an Ipsos analyst.

The latest poll follows the cries for help from health workers in Sweden, increasingly overwhelmed by a pandemic that has made them sick and exponentially expelled more of their compatriots than in any other Nordic country. The situation has already overwhelmed Stockholm’s intensive care units, and authorities are now urgently trying to come up with contingency plans.

Read: Sweden’s covid workers abandon endangered numbers

No facial masks

Meanwhile, Tegnell has continued to defend Sweden’s overall strategy to avoid blockades. He also argues that there is no real evidence that they work with face masks, and Swedes are the only people who are left engaged in their daily lives largely without masks, with shops, restaurants and gyms open.

In an interview with TV4, Tegnell said no one knows if Sweden’s strategy has failed.

“More or less all countries are struggling with that,” he said. But he acknowledged that the situation in his home country is serious.

“We’re starting to address the breaking point in a lot of different aspects,” he said. “I understand that healthcare is going very badly … the staff is worn out,” all of which means that “the pressure on care is getting very, very big.”

More generally, the Ipsos / Dagens Nyheter poll of 1,226 voters showed that confidence in the authorities as a whole has fallen to a new low of 34%.

“If confidence in the authorities disappears, fewer people will listen to the advice and recommendations they give,” said Kallebring of Ipos. “It can have real consequences for life and death.”

Sweden’s central bank released one on Thursday estimating the economic cost of a prolonged pandemic. His research shows that every month the health crisis can be shortened, 25 billion crowns ($ 3 billion) will be added to gross domestic product and public finances will be improved by 20 billion crowns.

The King

The death toll from Covid-19 in Sweden is 7,802, the highest in the Nordic region in both absolute and per capita terms. The situation has caused such a shock in the country that it provoked a rare verbal intervention by the king.

“The Swedish people have suffered enormously in difficult conditions,” King Carl XVI Gustaf told state broadcaster SVT. When it comes to the strategy deployed in Sweden, he said, “I think we have failed.”

In his interview with TV4, Tegnell said he was “surprised” by the intensity of the second wave of the pandemic.

“I think a lot of people, with me, are surprised that he was able to come back so strongly,” he said.

(Adds Riksbank’s estimate of the cost of the prolonged pandemic)