[geysersam]

In the abstract the authors refer to professors being dismissed from the national health authority. But the also say this happened in 2014 and that the professors were rehired at the very prestigious medical university hospital Karolinska Institutet. That kind of references to seemingly incriminating facts without actually explaining how they affected the policies recommend by the public health authority is not a serious way of making a scientific argument.

I have a hard time believing the dismissed professors had dissenting opinions on the validity of lockdowns or facemasks already in 2014.

[gjm11]

It seems like you're suggesting that the authors of this paper are trying to imply that those professors were dismissed because they might give unwanted advice about Covid-19, or to hide the fact that they were re-hired at the Karolinska Institute. But the 2014 date, and the rehiring, are right there in the abstract in the same sentence as the one that says they were dismissed:

"In 2014, the Public Health Agency merged with the Institute for Infectious Disease Control; the first decision by its new head (Johan Carlson) was to dismiss and move the authority’s six professors to Karolinska Institute."

I'm not sure how these facts are any more "seemingly incriminating" than "actually incriminating", since the things you say (and I agree) make them less worrying are given plenty of prominence right up front.

It looks to me as if the argument the authors are trying to make is something like this: "The government moved the national health authority's actual experts out of the way several years ago, with the intention of making the health authority less an impartial scientific body and more a political tool. That meant that when the pandemic came along, politicians were able to persuade this body to make recommendations that were politically convenient even though they were scientifically unsound."

It may well be that that argument is a load of bullshit; I don't know. But, right or wrong or Not Even Wrong, it doesn't depend on hiding the 2014 date or the fact that the professors were given new jobs, and it doesn't need the people involved to have had the clairvoyance to predict what specific inconvenient scientific advice the professors might have insisted on giving.

[geysersam]

That's a conspiracy theory that simply makes zero sense from a Swedish political perspective. Exactly none. They don't make that accusation explicitly in the article because it's so ridiculous. 1. It's not like the National health agency was a pain in the butt for the Social democratic government in 2014. 2. Professors at Karolinska institutet can make their voices heard if they want to. It's the most prestigious scientific institution in Sweden. Their roles as top academics are still to advice relevant authorities. 3. Why would politicians actively undermine their own scientific advisors? For what ideological reason? I simply see none *in this context*. If it was about national economy, gender, migration or environment it *might* make more sense. But national health policy? That's a totally apolitical question in Sweden 2014.

There's also a simpler explanation at hand: a change in the organizational structure. The health authority still relies on advice from researchers. Maybe the change was made to make the advisors *more independent* as they're not on the payroll of the people they are to advice. A general trend in public management the last decades has been to reduce inhouse staff and outsource expert competency, this is totally in line with that.

If anything the government listened too much to the expertise in early 2020. That's why they did not take action earlier.

Never assume malice when incompetency is a sufficient explanation.