In a recent New York Times article, David Wallace Wells asked, “How did No-Mandate Sweden End up with such an average pandemic”. Let’s be clear. This admission from the New York Times, who tried to destroy the response to Covid-19, starting in April 2020 and continuing until this article, is nothing short of astonishing. The New York Times first tried to discredit the response, then tried to destroy Dr. Tegnell, the Swedish leader of the Swedish response, then tried to bury any reference to the Swedish response as it became clear that Sweden was doing far better than New York.
To be clear, Sweden did not have an “average pandemic”. First, Sweden did far better than almost all its European neighbours. According to Worldmeters.info Sweden ranks far ahead of “lockdown” advocates of USA, Hungry, Poland, Italy, UK, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and France.
In addition, because they did not use forced, authoritarian, non-pharmaceutical interventions, we now call “lockdowns”, they did not suffer massive collateral deaths from mental health damage, societal health damage, from lack of diagnosis and treatment of other neglected serious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, organ malfunction, and dementia. This is demonstrated by that fact that Sweden has one of the lowest excess mortality following the pandemic in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).
Further, unlike many of their lockdown neighbours and Canada, they did not suffer from damage to their children through impaired social development and academic diminishment, as they did not close their schools. The damage done to children in other OECD countries, especially Canada, will affect this generation for the rest of their lives.
Finally, because they did not lock down, Sweden does not have new massive debt for their citizens, governments, and industry. Future generations in Canada will be paying for the doubling of our debt and destruction businesses.
Canada could have avoided all of this, just like Sweden.
In January 2020, every Province and Territory in Canada had a Pandemic Plan. Likewise, the Government of Canada had a Pandemic plan. These plans had been written by our country’s best leadership in both medical knowledge and in Emergency Management. These plans were based on the best knowledge and Lessons Learned from previous pandemics, worldwide.
The experts who wrote these Canadian Pandemic Plans knew that NPIs should not be used, in most cases, except as a last resort, because NPIs have massive deadly and damaging collateral effects.
These Pandemic Plans stated we would respond to a virus like SARS CoV-2 exactly the way Sweden responded. We threw them all away and ignored them.
Medical and Emergency Management experts repeatedly tried to stop the Premiers, the MOH(s), and the Prime Minister from following the deadly and devastating response to COVID-19 in our country.
The Canadian public has been failed by all of political leadership and MOH in response to the SARS CoV-2 virus. Rather than defending the basic ethics of “Do no Harm” and “Full Informed Consent” which many of our medical officials stood up for, our Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons attacked and destroyed medical experts across Canada who challenged the deadly response. Further Canadians have been failed by our institutions charged with defending our democracy, including our investigative journalists and our courts charged with ensuring that as a minimum the Oakes test is applied before denial of any Charter Right or Freedom.
The deadly response in Canada, which is now advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO), will reoccur in future Canadian pandemics until the Canadian public realizes how badly they have been failed.
Sweden got it right. We had planned to respond exactly like Sweden. What happened in Canada?
David Redman had a distinguished military career before becoming the head of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency in 2004 and led the provincial response to the devastating floods of June 2005. He also led the team in the development of the 2005 Provincial Pandemic Influenza Plan. He retired in 2013.
For more on this topic see https://fcpp.org/authors/david-redman/
