Not only is it probably too early to judge any country's response properly, I wonder how far his expertise, or even just his reasoning, enables him to make a judgement worth listening to.
It's worth keeping in mind that the BBC likes to play the journalistic game of "holding the government to account", which really means they will support a kind of response (lockdowns) tacitly while criticising the government for any piece of bad news (because they didn't lockdown / didn't lockdown fast enough / hard enough) while also engaging in the kind of general doom-mongering that does nothing to inform or educate. Like much of a UK media that shares its outlook, there's been nigh on 6 months of articles looking for any sign that Sweden's largely voluntary strategy will or has failed, as Spiked noted[0]… oh, 6 months ago in May, so it seems it's been longer than 6 months.
For a far more balanced view of Sweden's response, I recommend this article[1] in the Spectator. I suspect I'll have to wait another 6 months until the sun is back out for another of its ilk.
Life comes at you fast, so articles from 2.5 months ago, as the Spectator article is, aren't much more helpful than articles from 6.5 months ago, as the Spiked article is.
To the point in the Spectator piece, though, it could easily be argued that the US is similarly incapable of imposing real lockdowns, for both legal and cultural reasons.
I agree about the time aspect, though the Spiked piece was to show that the desire of some in the media for Sweden's failure has been going on for a long time.
> it could easily be argued that the US is similarly incapable of imposing real lockdowns, for both legal and cultural reasons
Completely agree, but again, the media made their focus Trump instead of detailing the situation as it really is (which is not to ignore his input). That must not sell enough papers nowadays.
It's worth keeping in mind that the BBC likes to play the journalistic game of "holding the government to account", which really means they will support a kind of response (lockdowns) tacitly while criticising the government for any piece of bad news (because they didn't lockdown / didn't lockdown fast enough / hard enough) while also engaging in the kind of general doom-mongering that does nothing to inform or educate. Like much of a UK media that shares its outlook, there's been nigh on 6 months of articles looking for any sign that Sweden's largely voluntary strategy will or has failed, as Spiked noted[0]… oh, 6 months ago in May, so it seems it's been longer than 6 months.
For a far more balanced view of Sweden's response, I recommend this article[1] in the Spectator. I suspect I'll have to wait another 6 months until the sun is back out for another of its ilk.
[0] https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/28/why-they-hate-swede...
[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-myth-of-sweden