[imartin2k]

"When was the first time this happened? " March 5th " Det finns anledning att tro att ökningen av antalet svenska fall har nått sin kulmen, säger Folkhälsomyndighetens statsepidemiolog Anders Tegnell till DN. " https://omni.se/tegnell-om-virusfallen-jag-tror-att-det-vars... So on March 5, he believed that Sweden had reached the peak of infections. As if Wuhan, Italy - and at that point a bunch of other countries that were seeing rapid early infection - never happened. To me, just astonishing.

"You might argue that one should act as though it might be because we don't know so better safe than sorry - and I'd agree with that too." Indeed. I remember taking a flight on March 1 and being on high alert and pretty nervous, because already at that point, I had been reading in non-Swedish media about indications regarding asymptomatic transmission, and I was assuming that local transmission in Europe already was ongoing in various countries. While I didn't catch the virus, in hindsight, it clearly was a correct assumption. I early on internalized that instead of relying on advice from Tegnell and his health agency, I had to rely on my own understanding/sense-making, information consumption, on foreign experts and common sense.

"I don't know exactly how they value things - but I trust they know what they are doing. " For me, it's the opposite: Absolutely zero trust. And I had not even an opinion about him and his agency before Corona (I didn't even know of him). So this is not the result of a long-standing mistrust of Swedish authorities. This is the first time I am so strongly feeling a total lack of trust.

[alkonaut]

Wow yeas Mar 5th was probably around a month before it actually peaked, at least. Now, I don't know what data that statement was based on, it's possible that the days leading up to that really showed it - but in that case I don't think they were clear enough in saying a few days later that "nope, no it's not going down it's clearly still up".

I don't doubt that they are professionals but they are lousy communicators that somehow believe that sounding positive doesn't make them sound incompetent eventually. Sounding pessimistic and then positively surprised would be equally bad (scientifically) but would have much better optics!

[imartin2k]

3 days later Tegnell (March 8) said he had been "a bit too optimistic" (something he stated a couple of more times since then) and that the increase "might go on for a few more days".

"Därför verkar peaken dra ut ytterligare något eller några dygn mer än jag trodde, säger han och tror att kulmen kommer att nås i början på nästa vecka." https://omni.se/anders-tegnell-om-kulmen-jag-var-lite-for-op...

Personally I don't buy this being mostly a communication issue. I see this as an actual inability in intelligent, complex, system's thinking. In his brain, there is no large "simulation" of a global pandemic. There is a very small perspective, focusing only on Sweden, and only on the here and now, and the evidence that already has been produced. With this, one is doomed to be always behind, to ignore a lot of valuable knowledge, always being "too optimistic", and accumulating fatalities along the way. Obviously, his team doesn't seem to have contributed with a lot more either (or they have been ignored by him, who knows how the internal dynamics are)

He might be a scientist. But there are good scientists. And there are bad ones. Right?