I admit to being prejudiced, here, but my experience living in Sweden (a long time ago, it is true), knowing a bit of the language and seeing what goes on there makes me think of the Swedes as one of the most rational people on earth. It's true most other peoples don't give them a lot of competition on that score, and I am sure there will be Swedes reading this who will protest I've done their country an injustice. It's far worse than I'm making out, they'll tell me. Sure. Come over here and live. Don't forget to bring your Swedish health insurance. We don't provide it here.
Sweden is a small country, smaller in population than Michigan. It has better medical care than the US (and health indicators to show it) and a higher standard of living. But it doesn't have the resources of a huge, rich country like the US, so it worries them that in a pandemic they won't have access to vaccines made in other countries. So they're looking into other options:
The Swedish government has set aside 1 billion kronor (â¬108 million; US$145 million) to improve the Nordic country's preparedness for a possible flu pandemic, an official said Thursday.
The money will be portioned out over three years starting in 2008 and will be used to ensure the country's vaccine supply, said Henrik Kjellberg, a political adviser at the Health and Social Affairs Ministry.
"We're currently studying the options on how to build up the product capacity; whether we should build our own, supply it through Nordic cooperation or make sure the access (to vaccines) from other sources is good," Kjellberg said.
[snip]
"I think virtually everyone is in agreement that it is good to have a domestic production. Almost all countries have embargo laws where domestically produced vaccines are reserved for their own citizens." (AP)
Rational people.
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The Swedes have great medical insurance, first class medical care, a great public health system, and now they'll have a panflu vaccine. It's good to know my Swedish friends will survive the pandemic. Now how to get them to arrange an emmigrant visa for me? ;-)
It is easy to write the efforts of the Swedes off, and say it's all much simpler for them because they are a small nation. As you point out, Revere, they are no bigger than Michigan. Instead of writing their plans off, however, I'd like to see Michigan (or an equivalent state) use Sweden as an example of what can be done. There's no reason some of our states, with the economic base and technology available to them, couldn't work towards the same goals.
Pixie: I agree with you completely. In fact two US states, both about the size of Sweden, used to have their own vaccine manufacturing, Michigan and Massachusetts. They both gave it up within the last decade or so, but there is no reason why it can't be done -- none exept ideology, that is.
Too bad there is almost never anything in the Swedish press about avian influenza -- or that the government has done virtually nothing to get people to prepare....
I would expect for the Swedes to to come through a global pandemic in reasonably good shape even without a vaccine. They are a competent, responsible culture. And they are not horribly overpopulated relative to their country's large land area. (The scythe will swing the hardest, as it always has in the past, in sprawling overstuffed conurbations, the Third and Fourth world megaslums.)
Randy Kruger had some meritorious comments about power plants in the US context. The Swedes joined in the pan-European fear fest a few years back after Chernobyl, and opted to progressively decommission their entire nuclear generating capacity. (I don't recall anyone looking at the dismal safety record of Soviet-era Aeroflot and proposing that Western countries ban their own civil aviation, but there you have it.)
Sweden has already shut several nuke plants. In a serious pandemic, I would expect for people everywhere to very rapidly rediscover the merits of electric power generation which is not reliant on fresh weekly redeliveries of fuel. But it will also be, of course, far too late by that time to reconsider infrastructure choices.
Wonder whether they will be able to limp along on their remaining nuclear and hydroelectric baseline. It gets awfully cold in a Scandinavian winter.
Meanwhile, next door in Finland, they should be doing great. The country is building multiple new nuclear power plants. Ample reserve capacity. The Finns, I note, have learned the hard lesson that history can happen to them, by the regrettable schooling of *having* had history happen to them. They are in no hurry to repeat any experiences as bad as what has come before. Bravo for them.
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yes, what comes to infrastructure and rationality, the Finns are in quite the same league with Swedes.