ABSTRACT

From the outset of the coronavirus crisis, Sweden has been heavyily criticized for its exceptional pandemic mitigation policy. Sweden is often accused pursuing an abnormal and ‘disastrous strategy' that puts its citizens’ lives at risk. In this article, we analyze the most widespread criticisms of Swedish ‘exceptionalism’, in order to identify and describe the prevailing implicit norms on which the criticisms are based. While the explicitly proclaimed norms assert that the anti-pandemic measures are aimed at keeping the number of infections below the maximum capacities of the national health systems, the implicit norms turn out to be significantly different, i.e. primarily about the number of coronavirus-related deaths. Moreover, we point out that this norm is not about protecting lives in general, but only about protecting people from dying with a coronavirus infection. We argue that this implicit norm is asymmetric and therefore not tenable, because it implies that a death from the coronavirus is considered more important than a death from another infection. Against this backdrop, we conclude by discussing possible future developments of this norm and call for an international public debate about how much protection against infectious diseases society should provide in general – not only against one particular disease.

抽象的

从冠状病毒危机开始，瑞典就因其出色的缓解大流行政策而受到严厉批评。瑞典经常被指责采取一种异常的“灾难性战略”，使其公民的生命处于危险之中。在本文中，我们分析了对瑞典“例外主义”的最广泛批评，以便确定和描述批评所依据的普遍隐含规范。虽然明确宣布的规范声称抗大流行措施旨在使感染数量保持在国家卫生系统的最大能力以下，但隐含规范却有很大不同，即主要是与冠状病毒相关的死亡人数。此外，我们指出，该规范并不是要保护生命，但仅能保护人们免于死于冠状病毒感染。我们认为这种隐含规范是不对称的，因此不成立，因为它暗示冠状病毒的死亡被认为比其他感染的死亡更为重要。在此背景下，我们最后讨论该规范的未来发展，并呼吁国际社会就社会应在总体上对传染病提供多少保护（不仅针对一种特定疾病）进行辩论。