In their own Swede time: pandemic pragmatism

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Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. The all encompassing nature of China's Communist Party machinery makes it seem as if no wrongdoing could ever go unpunished. But take a look down at street level our correspondent find the cases in which non political naughtiness is tolerated and the numbers of many sea turtle species are dwindling. The culprit, poachers. The turtle's eggs are a delicacy in much of Central America. Now some scientists have come up with a devilishly clever way of finding who's stealing them. But first, A second wave of coronavirus is crashing across Europe. France, the Netherlands and Portugal have reported record numbers of daily cases. New restrictions are coming into force across the continent. And in Britain, where fresh measures will be announced today that again has public health officials looking towards Sweden.

In the spring sunshine. Stockholm's cafes have customers, the schools are open and the Prime Minister has urged people not to panic.

In March, when much of the world ground to a halt, the country of around 10 million people stayed mostly open for business.

It's about saving the restaurants. It's about saving the pubs. It's about saving people's work.

The country's leaders encouraged social distancing. Limited group gatherings to fewer than 50 and told people over the age of 70 to self isolate. They said they trusted the people to do the right thing.

If this pandemic goes on for a year or more, it will be possible to keep our measures.

Debate has raged since then about the merits of that light touch. Amid a second wave, the country is making tentative policy moves that align it more with its European neighbors. But authorities believe that the long run benefits of their approach will become clear, even if the more immediate costs already are.

I went to visit a city near Stockholm called Soditalia, which is home to lots of immigrants, primarily from the Middle East.

Slava Chankova is our healthcare correspondent.

We met up with Nuri Kino, who is a local activist and journalist. And we went to a cemetery. It's this beautiful place with really nice foliage, very peaceful. But it had lots of new graves.

As you can see. We have I don't know how many white crosses, which means that they haven't been able to produce gravestones. So it's all new graves? Yes, new graves. It's like a war zone.

They were mostly people from the local immigrant communities who had died in April or May, some of them from the.

Same family I know just in this graveyard. I would say, you know, my dad's best friend, one of my friend's sons, only 41 years, and he was just.

Telling me how tragic things have been back in April and May when lots of people from the area were hospitalized for COVID 19.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 AV. I know 32 of those that died with, you know, diagnosed with that with the disease with COVID 19.

And so months on. What do the statistics say about this on a national scale? How has Sweden done?

Sweden has not done very well. If you look at deaths, it has one of the highest death rates per capita in Europe and roughly 10 times the rate in Norway and Finland. About half of deaths were in care homes for the elderly. And that's fairly consistent with what we've seen in other countries. The immigrant communities were hit very early in the pandemic, before the authorities even realized that the virus was spreading so rapidly there. So they couldn't reach them with official information about how to protect themselves. And many of the early outbreaks actually happened in those big funerals and religious gatherings that are common in these areas.

And the broader picture here of those relatively light restrictions early on, one element of that was that Sweden was striking a balance that would keep the economy strong. Did that pay off?

Not really. Sweden hasn't done any better than Norway or Finland or the other Nordic countries. In fact, their economy shrank by more in the second quarter of this year. But you know, many people argue that it's perhaps too early to be doing the maths on these things, because Sweden did not have some of the interruptions in children's schooling or people's lives that many other countries had.

And as Europe suffers its second wave, does it look like Sweden will avoid its own?

So the best guess is that about 20% of people in Sweden probably have been infected, and that's with huge variations around the country. But in any case, that's nowhere near enough the level of what's called herd immunity, which stops an infection from spreading. Now second waves are starting to happen everywhere, including probably in Sweden. They've had cases rising slowly, but they definitely rising in a couple of areas. And they are reintroducing testing and tracing, which they had abandoned at the beginning in the spring when cases became way too many for them to manage, and quarantine, which is a new thing. But in Sweden, the quarantine is seven days, and it only applies to people who live with someone who's been infected versus most other places in Europe where the quarantine is 14 days. And it applies to all close contacts, plus people who have traveled to parts of Europe with higher rates of infection.

Why is that quarantine period so short?

They're not aiming to catch every single infection, but to do the most that they can with minimally restrictive measures. People are in the incubation period for 14 days, but people are most contagious in that first week after they develop symptoms. So it is very reasonable to expect that they will catch the bulk of infections if people comply with the seven day quarantine. The idea in Sweden is that whatever they do has to be sustainable, people have to comply. And in order for people to comply, it has to be minimally disruptive to their lives. I spoke with Johan Carlson, the head of the Swedish public health agency, and that's what he said.

If the prospect is that you have to have this for another year or so, you need to have something that you could live with. But of course people get tired.

And.

Young people, I mean, I can understand that.

He compared what's going on to, you know, when you have drivers going over the speed limit, I mean, if you.

Have a speed limit of 40 and you realize people are driving 60, the obvious answer is not let's put the speed limit to 30, rather say try to push people down to 40 kilometers.

And that's the idea, not to say People are not complying. You know, let's put even more draconian measures on them. But to understand the reasons why, they're taking a much broader view of what public health is about. It's not just about COVID 19 and preventing deaths and infections, but also about what the consequences are of the measures they take to people's health in general. And they know that people need social life that's very important for their mental health. So they're really kind of trying to strike a balance between these two things.

So from the very start, people have looked to Sweden for guidance looking at their light lockdown measures, but it's not an entirely rosy picture. I mean, what do you think are the takeaway messages here?

I think the takeaway message is that Sweden's approach has been very pragmatic. They're looking at not just what they're restrictions are going to accomplish in the short term, but also at what their long term costs are going to be. And trying to find a balance, which I think is very different from what other countries in Europe are doing, which are just thinking of, you know, what do we do now to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed next month? In Sweden, the idea is that you have to take people's broader health into perspective. So for example, in Sweden, the idea is that you shouldn't interrupt children's education because people who are better educated have better health throughout their lives. And the other take home message from Sweden is that they're very, very cognizant of the fact that people are going to get tired of restrictions and want to implement something that shouldn't change over time, that people are going to get used to and are going to accept for what may be as long as a year, even longer until a vaccine comes.

Slovea, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

There's nothing kindly about China's security machine. It crushes open challenges to the Communist Party. It weeds out even hints of political dissent. Yet on occasion, with non political rule breakers or even protesters, its functionaries can be surprisingly willing to turn a blind eye.

And the dianbing? So on a recent weekday night, I headed out with my assistant Chen Jiehao into the center of Beijing just before midnight. And we were looking for people working illegal street food stalls. So should we wander around the side and talk to her that way?

David Rennie is our Beijing bureau chief.

And we found, I best only say at a big junction between a bus station and an ancient temple because she is breaking the law. Mrs. Hu, She has a stall. It's like it's a push cart with glass walls. There's a gas. She sells two things, very traditional food for Beijing streets. One is the Jianbing, which is like this sort of egg savory pancake. And also a vat of boiling oil for cooking chou tofu, which is stinky tofu, which really is genuinely very stinky fermented tofu. It's a speciality. And the thing that is really striking about street food sellers like Mrs. Hunter is that although China is a police state and although Beijing is now absolutely blanketed with security cameras and it's very tightly controlled, although her stall has no license and is illegal, she's operating on the street night after night.

But you say she's making traditional foods and this seems quite a normal thing to do. Why is this illegal?

Beijing has become ever less tolerant of things like street sellers and even markets. They think it's unhygienic, it's backwards. They would like everyone to be in air conditioned shopping malls. But there's still, you know, it's still a big working class city as well. And there are people at all hours of the day and night who want to eat. And one of the wonderful things about stores like Mrs. Hu is she has these little plastic stools on the pavement beside her and her customers. When I went, there was a bus driver still in her uniform. There was a surprisingly young kid who was queuing up for some stinky tofu. There were some kind of people who clearly been drinking a nightclub, all just kind of crammed together on these little plastic stools, eating these very traditional Beijing pancakes. But if she were to set up this stall in the daytime, she would be in danger of being caught by the Chungguan. These are city guards. They are the lowest level of the reinforcement, and they enforce things like market trading rules or the fact that she doesn't have a license for her stall. And in the past, they had a really grim reputation. People got killed by the Chengguan and it was quite common to see them kicking people, overturning their carts, spilling everything to the street, taking their possessions, stealing their money. The last few years, the Chongguan, because they have been giving law enforcement a bad reputation, do seem to have been softening and told to behave themselves. Mrs. Hu has certainly noticed to change. And when we asked her about how the Chongguan behaves, she said, well, it's not like the old days. Now, if the Chungguan came, they would just ask me to leave. But in the past, they would grab you. They'd take your cart, they might try and hit you up for money, But the last five years or so they won't hit you anymore. So now it's a lot better.

Why though? What's changed?

So the Chengguan were created really in the 1990s, these very badly paid, very badly trained, lowest level law enforcement and just they started hitting so many people in public and behaving so thuggishly and in some cases killing people that it just gave them a bad name. And so the government decided to crack down. And there's another interesting wrinkle, which is that although big cities think of street stalls and street peddlers as shameful and backwards because of COVID and the fact that really gave the Chinese economy a kind of two, three month heart attack, the Prime Minister Li Keqiang suggested actually cities should encourage street traders to help boost a Covid battered economy.

Where does public opinion fall on this, though? Presumably that the Chinese people would like to have these, these roadside stalls there.

It's interesting, when there have been news stories about the Chongguan beating up traders, you'll very often see crowds shouting at them and taking the side of kind of the underdog, the little guy. Although they also call the Chongguan out if they think someone is starting a smelly street food stall too close to their window. The government is getting smarter about trying to make the point that it's more sensitive about city management. Really interesting development is that one of the best documentary makers in China, a guy called Chen Weijun, was given permission to follow around the Chungguan for nearly two years in the central city of Wuhan. This was before Wuhan became the epicenter of the latest pandemic. And the film has actually just been given a limited release in Chinese cinemas, which is a sign that the government thinks basically it makes at least some of the Chungguan in this fly on the wall documentary look good. Although you do also see them being utterly tormented, outwitted and ultimately humiliated in some cases by this incredibly charismatic street trader in his 70s, Wang Tiancheng, who basically makes their life a complete misery. This documentary, City Dream, is a really terrific film and it's really dramatic. I mean, you see this guy, Wang Tiancheng, who has no permission to be running this enormous fruit store. And the thing that he does, which is very distinctive about the way that law enforcement works at the lowest levels of Chinese society, is that although he's breaking the rules, his best form of safety is not to hire a law and insist on his rights, but to be such a Royal pain, that it's too much trouble to stop him from carrying on his business. So you see him not just arguing with the Chongguan, but hitting them, Grabbing their notebooks, threatening to commit suicide, saying he's going to die on the spot, trying to kowtow to them, and they just really don't know to handle him. There's this brilliant line where one of them says, this guy's like psoriasis. There's no cure for him. There are some very powerful visual images where at one moment, like Roman legionaries, they surround him between riot shields. So you see this barrel chested, shirtless old man penned in a square of shields and he's still defiant. For a moment he says, I can't move at all. You're cramping my freedom. But then he looks the guards in the eye and he says, where is your conscience? A second ago you were just like me, a man with no job. And that moment of class solidarity, the guards can't look him in the eye. It's really powerful stuff.

And so what does it tell you that the Chinese authorities, further up the food chain, have allowed the filming and the release of this documentary showing law breaking at a lower level.

They wouldn't have allowed it if at the end of the film, old Wang doesn't basically write a letter of apology and confession and take the kind of settlement that the authorities offer him. And that's what's interesting about this film, is that although China is an incredibly ruthless police state and if you challenge them on a, say, political basis, they will crush you without mercy. If your dispute is entirely about money and wanting to have a fruit stall, they will. If you make enough noise and get a big enough crowd around you, they will kind of pay you off to be quiet. And the obsession with social stability means that although they hold all the power, they will sometimes cut a deal with the powerless.

David, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondence, subscribe to the Economist to find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer shortly after mating, female sea turtles trundle up a beach, dig into the sand, lay their clutch of eggs and then cover them up. Some people travel the world over to see this seaside spectacle. Others view it as a money making opportunity. Poaching is an ever increasing threat to turtles. Unhatched eggs, green turtles.

They lay on average 120 eggs.

Dr. Helen Feazi is a conservation biologist at the University of Kent in Britain. She's Been investigating how egg poachers operate.

They usually take the whole clutch. Sometimes they might leave the last few at the bottom if they're in a hurry. Sometimes they're taking them in their T shirts and they just run off with them.

In a new study, she and her team have revealed a novel way to follow the poached eggs.

Turtle eggs are incredibly popular in Central America. They're a popular delicacy and they're worth money. And in a lot of regions, being able to go down to the beach, dig up some eggs and sell them is a valuable way of making some extra cash.

Matt Kaplan is our science correspondent.

And as a result, we've seen a lot of turtle species go downhill since the 1960s when this became a big deal. As an example, the Olive Ridley turtles dropped down by half since the late 1960s. And that's not doing the. Aware of this problem and quite keen to help the turtle populations, Helen Fiesey at the University of Kent and working in collaboration with Paso Pacifico, an NGO that is quite keen to protect turtles, came up with the idea that it might be possible to create decoy eggs and stick GPS transmitters inside them and then let the authorities track the criminals who are collecting the eggs and find out where they were going with the eggs and then make arrests.

So how does the plan actually work?

So the team is using these decoy eggs, which they are cleverly calling invest egg gators. They're planting these decoy eggs into turtle nests. They wanted to make sure that putting the eggs into nests wouldn't mess with the actual eggs that need to hatch and go back to sea to help the populations. But they also wanted to make sure that they could get an egg 3D printed that would withstand the sandy environment and the wet and not wipe out its battery before being collected by a criminal. So it's really interesting because Dr. Fisi said elsewhere that she was inspired by TV shows when she designed the system.

You might be familiar with Breaking Bad, where they actually put a GPS tracking device on a tanker of chemicals and followed this tanker of illegal chemicals.

And so were these decoy eggs actually taken?

Yeah, you bet. They placed 101 decoy eggs out there from 101 nests, and of those, 25 EG in total were poached. Some of them ended up pretty close by. I mean, literally, one ended up two kilometers away from the nest at a nearby bar, where its signal abruptly ended, presumably because someone smashed open the egg and went, oh, that's not food. But some of them told very unusual stories. One went 43 km from the beach where it was deployed, ended up in the town of Catiari. And what's astonishing there is that that particular egg was broken open. And then the people in the home that had broken it open got in touch with a nearby turtle monitoring project and said, is this yours? And the people at that project said, oh, no, that's not ours, but we know the people who are doing that. So they took photographs of the broken open GPS egg and sent it to Dr. Fisi and her colleagues and said, you're not going to believe this. Which tells you that either the folks at the end of the chain who are buying these eggs don't know that buying them is illegal, or they're buying them and they just don't care. And seriously, Jason, one egg was taken.

Significantly further, was deployed on Saturday night.

Left the beach on a Monday morning, traveled 137 kilometers inland, and then stopped. And I was able to identify the exact supermarket where it had arrived, but it hadn't gone into the supermarket. It was round the back. It was like in some back alley kind of. Why would you be there with turtle eggs if you're not doing something somewhat suspicious?

And you mentioned one concern was whether this experiment would interfere with the rest of the eggs hatching. How did that pan out?

It worked out absolutely fine. The researchers monitored a whole bunch of control nests that didn't have any decoys in them and kept track of how many sea turtles hatched in those. And then they compared that number to the 76 nests that had decoys planted in them that were not pilfered by criminals. And the number of eggs that hatched was exactly the same, or at least statistically insignificant, showing that putting a decoy egg into a nest really has no effect on whether or not the turtles hatch in those nests or not. So that's a good thing.

Matt, thank you very much for joining us.

Hey, my pleasure, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow.