If there's one thing this pandemic has revealed, it's that people everywhere have unrealistic views about everywhere elseOriginally Posted by Loki
this is esp. noticeable in the coverage Sweden has received in international media over the past few years, and esp. during the pandemic (for obv reasons).
Sweden is a well-functioning state with a very trusting populace, but it's also a society featuring widespread nepotism, pervasive and quite aggressively enforced groupthink/conformity, as well as a cultural taboo on open professional disagreement—esp. disagreement that runs up against the chain of command. I truly believe that, if our public health agency had been led by another group of scientists—or if another agency like our civil contingencies agency had been in charge of pandemic response—our approach would've been quite different, esp. wrt those decisions that clearly had their basis in deficient risk analysis or an incautious interpretation of evidence. Some of the problems we're seeing now were anticipated by people who were critical of the reorganization that led to the birth of this agency.
Other countries may have advantages in the form of better crisis-oriented leadership, a more robust system for adjudicating policy risks & goals, better structures for accountability, healthy skepticism of authority, a better debate climate, a stronger govt. with a clear majority, different organization of govt authority (eg. greater or lesser autonomy at regional level), etc.
I will say this though—in no other country would I have been able to spend this much time at home not doing official work, during a pandemic. We squandered our social and structural advantages, letting thousands die prematurely or be saddled with preventable disability, just to cater to the egos of some washed-up old sexist dudes who refuse to acknowledge how wholly inadequate they are to the task they've been assigned. Dah well
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