A few days ago, I took a stroll to the shops. It was a glorious morning and the parks and cafés were full of families enjoying the sunshine.Perhaps the shops were a little quieter than they would have been a year ago; but they were busy enough.The restaurants were preparing for lunch; the mood was relaxed and happy. And nobody — yes, nobody — was wearing a mask. That, of course, is the giveaway. I wasn’t in Britain but in Sweden, a nation which stood alone in Europe in refusing to institute lockdown. .....The author of the country’s coronavirus strategy, a mild-mannered state epidemiologist called Anders Tegnell, has become one of the most controversial men in Europe.From the start, he insisted that mandatory lockdown was a waste of time. Sweden had a long-established plan for a pandemic, Mr Tegnell said, and was going to stick to it. People should be sensible, wash their hands, avoid public transport and keep a safe distance, but that was it. Closing schools was ‘meaningless’. Shutting borders was ‘ridiculous’. Masks were, by and large, a waste of time. Shops and restaurants should stay open. ......According to Sebastian Rushworth, an American-born doctor in a Stockholm A&E department, he hasn’t seen a single Covid-19 patient in a month: ‘Basically,’ he writes, ‘Covid is in all practical senses over and done with in Sweden.’ So should Britain have followed the Swedish example?"
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