In terms of COVID, what the Swedish system led to was over reliance on one person. Whose strategy, incidentally, was criticized by his predecessor from the beginning. So if this had happened a few years ago, or if the predecessor would have had a slightly longer term, the same “rational system” would have led to a 180 different response.

And the problem for that 1 person was that Tegnell dismissed asymptomatic transmission. Dismissing the possibility of asymptomatic transmission led to making a mockery of his plans.

Everything since then has been an attempt to save face, including coming up with nonsensical excuses about how Sweden cannot do some things because “free dumb” (which it has since proceeded to do anyways).

Ironically, the faceless bureaucratic nature of public health in most countries allowed them to change tacks when they were wrong. In Sweden, since Tegnell became so intimately connected with and responsible for the Swedish response (to the point that politicians would blindly accept what he was saying), it became difficult for him to accept where he was wrong and then change strategy accordingly.

The rest of the world had it easier. Politicians would blame the WHO and China, public health officials would anonymously blame the politicians, and vice versa.

Within all this blaming it was still possible, as various public agencies in the rest of the world have, to actually change and improve responses based on new information since no one individual was tied to the earlier plan.

Of course, in general, the Swedish system is a lot better. But the pandemic has exposed a flaw that it’s over reliant on a single source of expertise. They mah need to consider having a separate private source of expertise (for example, the UK has something called SAGE) that can step in if the original source is unable to make necessary adjustments.