Sweden Tries Out a New Status: Pariah State

Sweden's population is not quite twice the size of Norway's — yet Sweden has reported 21 times as many deaths from Covid-19, prompting many countries to close its border to Sweden, reports the New York Times: Norway isn't the only Scandinavian neighbor barring Swedes from visiting this summer. Denmark and Finland have also closed their borders to Swedes, fearing that they would bring new coronavirus infections with them. While those countries went into strict lockdowns this spring, Sweden famously refused, and now has suffered roughly twice as many infections and five times as many deaths as the other three nations combined, according to figures compiled by The New York Times. While reporting differences can make comparisons inexact, the overall trend is clear, as is Sweden's new status as Scandinavia's pariah state... "When you see 5,000 deaths in Sweden and 230 in Norway, it is quite incredible," said Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and the former director of the World Health Organization, during a digital lecture at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in May... Swedes now find themselves with few options for moving about the European Union. Most countries in the bloc have reopened their borders to member nations, but only France, Italy, Spain and Croatia are welcoming Swedes without restrictions. On a popular Scandinavian radio program, a journalist with a leading Swedish paper complained about how Sweden was being treated by its neighboring countries, according to the Times. "We are supposed to sit here in our corner of shame, and the worst part is that you're savoring it." The BBC notes that just days later, on Wednesday, Sweden reported 1,610 new infections — roughly one infection for every 6,354 people in Sweden and its highest number of daily infections since the outbreak began.

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