Comment by imartin2k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by imartin2k | Hacker News Reader

German here who moved to Sweden in 2006. Since January, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has constantly made claims which turned out to be inaccurate, misleading or at least overly optimistic. Among the more devastating ones is that he in an interview on February 8 stated that "there is absolutely no risk for coronavirus when traveling to skiing vacations in the Alps/Southern Europe". To me, such a lack of foresight as an epidemiologist alone disqualifies him from the heavy role he has. Therefore, I don't take any claim he makes seriously. Sadly, he loves media appearance and seems to be giving interviews all day long, every day. So it's totally impossible to escape those claims. They are everywhere.

Shockingly, his display of (partial?) incompetence has hardly impacted the credibility he enjoys among large parts of the Swedish society. In fact, many people totally love him. That's something I just cannot comprehend. To me, it looks like mass hypnosis.

My personal stance by now is that I'm not following the Swedish Health Agency's recommendations, but the German authorities', which I consider more trustworthy and competent (based on the absence of a track record of false predictions, a respect of cautionary principles, and an absence of exaggerated self-assurance). However, I don't like feeling that way. Usually I'm "emotionally" only reverting back to my native country when it comes to the Football World Cup :)

As a foreign national living in Sweden since 1978 I wholeheartedly agree with you. The Swedish authorities has been slow to react, fearful of disrupting business, generally been too lax, and has succeeded into turning this incompetence into a virtue, which large swathes of otherwise intelligent people are swallowing whole.

This incompetence, together with an health care organization for the elderly in complete disarray and shambles due to under funding and rampant privatizations is granting the elderly in Sweden a death rate far beyond any comparable country. It is a mess, and it is with a sense of disbelief one observes that the state epidemiologist is allowed to continue to be in charge.

There are explanations for the support however: since a lot of the criticism originally came from far-right quarters, it became a matter of political decency among all other parties to defend the state policy. In addition there is an effect that seems to take hold in crisis in almost all countries: support for perceived leaders will surge, and people will vehemently turn on any criticism. Pity the leaders in Sweden turned out to be so incompetent and that the valid criticisms have been drowned out completely.

> Among the more devastating ones is that he in an interview on February 8 stated that "there is absolutely no risk for coronavirus when traveling to skiing vacations in the Alps/Southern Europe".

To be fair, that sounds like he was just reiterating the World Health Organization's official and very vocal position on the covid19 epidemic, which nowadays has been patently clear that it was motivated by the Chinese regime's push their massive shameless Wuhan cover-up mess.

I think this is decidedly unfair critizism, and is based on cherrypicking statements out of context especially regarding timing. The statement about the Alps/Southern europe has for sure been shown to be false in retrospect, but when it was made nobody knew there was an outbreak brewing there, so it was very much based on what was known at the time. I don't think any epidemiologist could have predicted the big outbreak in the alps/northern Italy specifically, and as far as I know, the advise from Tegnell was not different from that of the German authorities at the time. Basing your judgement of Tegnell only on this statement seems very ill-advised.

"nobody knew there was an outbreak brewing there" How do you know that? It's 2020, a globalized world, heavy exchanges between China and Italy, supercomputers, complex models. Wouldn't one expect from experts in virology that they actually do have means to foresee these scenarios? I personally do. I was monitoring the coronavirus situation at that time due to personal travel plans. And by mid February I saw a high probability (70 % - 80 %) that we would have significant outbreaks in Europe. Thus, I do expect more from a state epidemiologist than such a display of false certainty.

Apart from that, Tegnell has been wrong in so many regards (how often hasn't he claimed that the outbreak is near a peak, or that there is reason for optimism??! I don't have enough fingers to count that). One would rather have to cherrypick in order to find a specific prediction/claim/statement which turned out to be correct.

In the end, it comes down to what we expect from our leading experts. The experts who in fact decide about many people's lives, in this case. Particularly in a country in which most people follow the state experts' recommendations without any questions asked.

What I expect from leading experts is to give clear opinions and recommendations based on their best assesment of the situation given available data. I also expect them to quickly and humbly adapt to new evidence when it is found, while keeping in mind that new is not always better.

I don't expect experts to always be right, sometimes the best prediction turns out to be incorrect. This does not change the fact that it was the best prediction at the time it was made, given the available data.

I personally feel that this is exactly what Tegnell is doing in public discourse, he is very quick to point out when there are uncertainties and what the nature of it is, but is still able to present clear advise. He has also demonstrated willingness to change when new evidence is found. This is a far cry from what I see many politicians are doing, and I think this is the reason he is enjoying very high trust from the Swedish general population.

Thank you, that’s insightful. An honest (not cynical) follow up question: Would that in consequence mean that in your perspective, an expert who in mid February somewhat speculative had pointed to a possible outbreak in Italy or elsewhere in Europe - based on predictive scenario modeling and probabilities - had done a worse job than one who ruled out such a possibility, by relying exclusively on that moment’s available data (despite virus data lagging a few weeks)?

I'm very sorry to hear you are not following the recommendations of Swedish authorities, I would strongly recommend you do, because they are contrary to what you claim here, not actually based on Tegnells personal whims or vanity, but based on the many experts employed at the agency, and more importantly adapted to local circumstances in Sweden, such as the current stage of the epidemic, which areas are most affected and so on. As long as the German recommendations are stricter this is of course not that problematic, but it could mean you pay less attention to things that are more urgent to adress in Sweden.

They are stricter, that was the whole point why I mentioned it. So no need to worry :)

> based on the many experts employed at the agency

How can you make an appeal to authority while denying any non-Swedish authority? Are Swedish authorities just better then those anywhere else? Hm.

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