The Media’s Unwillingness to Revisit Their ‘Sweden Is a Disaster’ Narrative is Both Destructive and Telling

It cannot be said enough how vulnerable the modern news media is — when a big story hits — to becoming instantly, deeply invested in narratives that fit various agendas, and then failing to revisit that storyline once a more complete factual record finally becomes apparent. There may be no better recent example of this danger than the media’s treatment of Sweden and its controversial handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Sweden, more than any other major country, decided to swim against the tidal wave of world-wide government lockdowns in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. Government restrictions were much lighter there than elsewhere else, and even mask use was never mandated, or even strongly encouraged. At first, this decision appeared to have disastrous consequences, because Sweden had one of the world’s worst per-capita death tolls (and, it should be noted, the oldest average age of virus deaths in the world, with few under the age of 70 dying) during the early stages of the pandemic, and did not even escape the economic damage done to the other nations which, blindly following each other’s lead, locked down via government edict. 

As often happens when an entity dares to threaten the conventional wisdom, especially when the stakes are incredibly high as they are here, Sweden got crushed in the Unites States news media. The New York Times in particular took strong shots at Sweden on literally a monthly basis, even declaring their attempts to obtain “herd immunity,” under the theory that this may be the only viable long-term strategy leading back to “normal” life, to be a disaster as early as the first part of May.

All this media pressure forced the leader of Sweden’s pandemic response to admit that mistakes had been made. At that point, the media’s narrative was set in stone and the country’s potentially mortal threat to the credibility of most of the world’s “experts” had been neutralized. Even just a few days ago, in an illustration of just how important destroying Sweden really is to elements of the news media and scientific establishment, the country was STILL the subject of strong attacks.

However, it now turns out that that the news media had declared Sweden the loser of a marathon after only the first few miles of the race. Like the old fable of the tortoise and the hare, things have changed quite dramatically as we are potentially now finally get closer to the finish line of this seemingly never-ending nightmare.

Since the media declared victory over Sweden, something remarkable happened. People there stopped dying — almost completely.

For the past month, their 7-day average for daily deaths resulting from the coronavirus has been in single-digits, even getting as low as one person per day. What makes Sweden’s amazing turnaround particularly interesting and relevant to America is that their daily death chart is an exact duplication, almost to the day, of New York state, only with far fewer deaths per capita. (To be clear, Sweden has a huge advantage over most of the United States in that its population is much less obese than ours, which reduces the risk of dying of the virus significantly).

What is going on here? Well, that is certainly still open for debate, though our news media, with rare exceptions, isn’t even letting the general public know that this is the subject of an extremely critical discussion that we as a country desperately need to be having.

Evidence that there is a hunger for more information of what is really happening in Sweden came over this past weekend when, at my urging, a former USA Olympic hockey player, Jon Blum, currently playing in Sweden, tweeted a rosy description of the scene there. The tweet went viral, being shared around the world, clearly thanks to freedom-loving people like me who are hoping that Sweden’s pro-liberty stance, and their quest for herd immunity, may have been ultimately vindicated.

3 weeks in Sweden and haven’t seen one mask. Old and young out and about living their life. Restaurants, bars, cafes all open. People aren’t living in fear. Amazing to see! Economy open and people are smiling. @Zigmanfreud

— Jon Blum (@JonBlum7) August 15, 2020

At the heart of this issue are two key questions. What is the actual death rate among people who get the virus, and what percentage of the population needs to have some semblance of immunity to it before the “herd” can start to be protected from catastrophic results?

Here is where, significantly, my view of “experts” diverges dramatically from the vast majority of the news media. I have enormous respect for “science” (for what it may be worth, my grandfather was a “rocket scientist” of some historical significance), but I also understand just how much “experts” desperately want to hang on to their perceived credibility/status and how, much like the news media, they are incredibly susceptible to “group think” and a fear of admitting mistakes. Dr. Anthony Fauci choosing to claim now that he “lied” back in March when he essentially mocked mass use of masks, rather than admitting he might have been “wrong,” is a classic example of this phenomenon.

Under the original various projections of how deadly the virus is, and how much of a population would need to develop immunity for the virus to be largely defused (believed to be about 60 percent), it is clear that at least two million Americans would have to have died of/with the virus in less than a year. This, understandably, was considered too high a price to pay and, especially in our largest states, literally no cost was spared in a desperate attempt to avoid that result. 

But now, if Sweden really has achieved victory in this battle, those incredibly powerful presumptions should now be brought into great question. (Amazingly, even the The New York Times started to do so on Monday.) Unfortunately, the scientific establishment, led by media darling Dr. Fauci (when he isn’t throwing out first pitches at baseball games, and posing for bizarre covers of InStyle magazine), is still self-protectively clinging to their potentially antiquated assumptions about herd immunity, and making apocalyptic pronouncements about the dangers of pursuing that painful path.

However, some in the scientific community are now finally starting to dare to push back against those who are trying to protect their own reputations more than the public. Professor Udi Qimron, soon-to-be head of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University, is among them. He recently unloaded on the attempts to destroy the Swedish model.

“There is a very great interest for anyone who has supported the draconian measures taken around the world to say that Sweden’s policy has failed,” he observed. “Because if it succeeded, and trillions went down the drain for no reason, someone will have to answer for it.”

“That is why all over the world they prefer to claim that [Sweden] was wrong. But in the end, the truth came to the surface. In a world where decision makers, their advisers and the media were able to admit their mistake and the initial panic that gripped them, we would have long since returned to routine. The ongoing destruction due to the inability to admit this mistake, despite the epidemic’s small mortality numbers, is outrageous. History will judge the hysteria.”

Obviously, we don’t yet know for certain that Sweden is completely out of the woods here (though the media should at least be asking “experts” for some alternative explanation for their current results), but we should soon see more evidence that such a conclusion is both legitimate, as well transferable to many locations here in the United States. Based on the data, a strong argument can be made that Arizona and Louisiana will soon see the same dissipation of virus deaths we witnessed in New York and New Jersey — with Florida, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, and California experiencing delays, but hopefully reaching the same conclusion very soon.

If this happens, no matter how hard the media will try to spin reality, it will hardly be because of mask mandates and restaurant closings suddenly “working.” It will be because at least some level of herd immunity has been achieved. That outcome should be celebrated, but it is one that the media is very unlikely to accept — at least until Joe Biden is elected president.

John Ziegler is a senior columnist for Mediaite. He hosts a weekly podcast focusing on news media issues and is documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.