How Sweden’s Herd-Immunity Approach Defied the World – Johan Anderberg : 958

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Formerly Bulletproof Radio, A state of High Performance. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today is going to be an episode that you're either going to love or maybe hate, depending on whether you like to tell yourself that you're always, always right or whether you're a curious person. Way back in, oh, the second or third week of the pandemic, I posted something on Instagram and. And I said, you know, two years from now, I'll bet you that Sweden comes out ahead, or maybe three years, whatever it was. And I was soundly told that I was a bad person and probably shadow banned for it. But I like to check and see if I'm wrong, because if I'm wrong, I will stand corrected. So what I've put together for you today is an episode where we're going to talk about what Sweden did during COVID 19 that was really different from the rest of the world. And you can call it the Swedish Experiment. And it's been either praised or held up as a cautionary tale, depending on who you listen to. And also, I'm going to dig deep on why did Sweden do this? What's different about Swedish culture? Are they more dangerous than other people? Maybe because they're Vikings, or is it mostly because they're jealous of Norway? We just don't know. But our guest today, who's now angry that I said that, is going to tell us the answer. He is a Swedish journalist named Johan Anderberg, who decided he was going to capture this rare moment in History in 2020. And his book is called the How Sweden Chose Its Own Path through the Worst Pandemic in a Hundred Years. And he talks about this time, and I'm going to argue whether or not this was the worst pandemic in a hundred years. But that's a different question. So that's what we're going to talk about is the differences in how humans behaved in different countries. Is it cultural? Is it government style? Is it how nationalized healthcare is? Why was it Sweden and what did it account for? What did it cause? Johan, welcome.

Thank you.

All right. A lot of people may not know what Sweden did during the pandemic because people sort of got lost in a cloud of depression and loneliness because of some government policies globally. But let's assume that if they don't remember what happened during the pandemic in the early days with Sweden, well, during.

The first year, Sweden did very, very little when it Came to restrictions. The schools were mainly open except for the very oldest children in high school. And we never had any face mask mandates. And people generally didn't use masks at all. Like I for one, I have used the mask three times in my life and two of those, on two of those occasions were when I was abroad. So pretty much on every, like in every aspect, Sweden did the complete opposite of what, say a very harsh state like New York or California did.

So you only wore a mask three times. Did you have to stay at home? I thought after a while masks did become required in Sweden. So you only wore a mask three times. Did you have to stay at home? I thought after a while masks did become required in Sweden.

No, but they were recommended at the subway during two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. But pretty much, pretty much no one abided those recommendations. So it was kind of for show a little bit because there was so much pressure from the outside world and from critics within Sweden to do something. And like when I talk to these people now, two and a half years afterwards, they kind of acknowledge that the stuff they did put in place for kind of a show, like for instance here in Stockholm, they just decided to melt down all the ice hockey rings for some reason and they kept everything else open. So it was just like some people freaking out and like we had to do something. So there were like all these like strange things that some people did to show that they were doing something. But overall very little changed. I, I think I, I could say that my life changed very little and my kids life lives didn't change at all.

I think I'm still kind of struck by it, is how Sweden just stood up as the only country in the world and said, you know what, we're just looking at data and we're not acting emotionally. And eventually someone has to do something. Which as far as I can tell, hotel rooms are still saying we're extra sanitized even though everybody knows that this is an airborne virus. And rubbing everything with hand sanitizer doesn't improve safety for coronavirus at all. But we did something. Even if it was meaningless, at least you did something. And it feels like that psychological need to do something, even if it doesn't work, far trumped thinking. But in Sweden it didn't. I mean you've written your whole book on this. Do you have a hypothesis? Is it cultural? Why did Sweden pick a different path?

I think it has mostly to do with the scientists in church.

Okay, it was leadership then.

Yeah. It was their Leadership and the fact that they were like really stubborn old people who weren't gonna get bullied into doing something else.

But the value of having elders. Okay, I got it.

But the interesting thing is that in Denmark and Norway, the scientists were really skeptical of all of these lockdowns as well. But what happened there was that the politicians overrode them, so to speak. But we had a pretty weak government at the time and they weren't really keen on stepping in and showing off at all. So they were pretty happy with these old doctors taking charge. And also there's this quirk in the Swedish constitution that gives government agencies a lot of autonomy. And that's, that's very unique for Sweden. I don't know any other country that forbids government ministers from meddling in the agencies at all.

Something though happened in Sweden though over time, according to the story I heard from relatives there and all, is that over time the Swedish population began demanding that something be done, even though the numbers were no better or worse than the countries around. And I'd see things in the U.S. sweden was wrong. The numbers are bad. But you look at the numbers, they actually were about normal actually in Sweden.

According to the latest stats from the who, Sweden has is at the bottom of the excess death list. In Europe, there are only a couple countries that have a lower excess death rate during the pandemic.

So you had one of the lowest excess deaths rates of all. Funny, that was my prediction that the overall mortality, when you look at all of it over time, that you guys would come out ahead because of your approach there. And it looks like I was pretty close. Who beat you?

Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, countries like that.

And these are countries with very low obesity rates.

Yes. I mean the general health is very good in those countries.

Yeah. So epidemiologists in Sweden were. They were just more empowered than in the rest of the world because the government via the constitution isn't allowed to mess with them. Do you think that was a core thing here or.

Yeah, yeah, I think that is the main reason actually. And also the constitution forbade some things, but there were all that kind of writing in other countries constitution as well. I'm really surprised how so many American states were allowed to do the stuff they did. I thought the American constitution protected citizens from.

Oh, it turns out we just ignore the constitution as a fact based person. Very, very many core tenets of the constitution are not practiced anymore. So like by telling ourselves that it, that it's practiced when it's not, we're doing ourselves harm. And so like maybe it's time that we either follow it or make a new one, but to pretend that we're doing it doesn't work.

Or maybe educate people so that they realize that these liberties are a good thing. They make everyone freer and safer in the long run. Because I think we have this problem in Sweden too, that we think that there are so many dangers so that we have to be protected from all kinds of things that we can't really protect ourselves against, so.

And you're saying that's a Swedish thing that's come into society there as well?

Yeah, I think it's a human thing actually that. Because I think this, this whole episode reminds me so much about. Of the war on terror, because during the run up to the Iraq war, the media was really not doing their job for a couple of years, just.

Oh, the weapons of mass destruction story.

Yeah. And I mean, I think even the New York Times apologized for their reporting after a while, so. And to be honest, I'm kind of an optimistic person, so I think this will happen with COVID too, in the end.

What used to happen with both reporters and with doctors and even like academic scientists is that there is a belief in. And then as the old ones retire, the new ones come in and then it changes and it's like a 25 year cycle and as the new kind of young upstarts come in, the ones who are exiting kind of yell at them. There's a bit of fighting and it sort of cycles. But it felt for a while like the Internet was taking that down to about 10 years because there was so much discourse and belief systems that weren't well rooted couldn't survive. And then with COVID definitely Sweden's approach stood out there as, as an example. But the debate got quashed in a way that the Internet hasn't really done before, which is scary from a free speech and just from a scientific discourse perspective. And I'm totally willing to have been wrong. But when all of the people I know and trust, including doctors who are speaking not in public forums, are saying I can't tell exactly which data to trust. I've never seen that before. But the fact that we learned from the last things like the war in Iraq, that sometimes the data is wrong and this time it was so blatantly suppressed. Was data suppression in Sweden the same? No.

Or that's really funny because there's a really funny story about that in the book.

Tell me the story. I'd love to hear that.

There's a really funny story about that in the book.

Tell me the story. I'd love to hear that.

There's this old epidemiologist who's kind of a patriarch of Swedish society. Swedish, like epidemiological society. And he was the one who hired Anders Tignell, who was the man in charge during COVID because he thought he was like so politically insensitive, but he didn't care at all about what people thought of him. So he goes on YouTube talking about all these, like, how natural immunity works and all that. And then he, he sends all these like, links to, to Anders Tegnal. And all those links, when I looked at them, they were like, go the Internet. So. Wow.

Yeah, there was deletion of scientific papers all over the place.

Yeah, so. So, and I, I'm not. That's way above my pay grade to, to say whether they were like really right or wrong scientifically in the end. But it's kind of interesting how this, which is like part of like really high science debate in Sweden, it's just like removed from, from YouTube. As if the people at YouTube would know better than these like people who have worked like all over the world with all kinds of diseases like Ebola, hiv, like everything. So I mean, it's insane.

Was there ever a call from the Swedish government to regulate Big Tech's behavior in Sweden?

Yeah, but from the other, from the other end, actually, because a couple of years ago lots of newspapers saw that there was a lot of, a lot of right wing propaganda on YouTube, so they wanted to, to make YouTube more liable for, for the content. And, and that is also kind of ironic because, because that kind of anti Semitic and right wing stuff is still on YouTube, but, but, but not like some epidemiological debate. And, and for the record, I, I think the government in general should stay out of moderating stuff. I think it's better to, to get it out in the open. But it's kind of weird that you shut down one thing and let the other thing, which is definitely much worse, stay on.

Well, now that YouTube and Google and Facebook and all of those guys have said that they are taking responsibility for the content, they should be liable for it globally. And if governments, even one government like Sweden or maybe France would just stand up, maybe Ireland stand up and just say, all right guys, if you choose what to delete, then you're responsible for it financially, that would solve the free speech problem once and for all. But right now the government's enjoying being able to tell Big Tech what to do. As far as I Can tell I. Or maybe advertisers. It's such a bizarre world. I don't know what to think of it. But the fact that we had one bright shining variance in Sweden, the fact that you were able to write a book about this and like, oh, it's because we had well trained epidemiologists and we had autonomy from politicians. So maybe the lesson here for the world is we need to make sure that our constitution at the very base operating system level of governments, make sure that scientists cannot be pushed on by either government or Pfizer investments. And if we could just do that, maybe we'd have some real science.

Yeah. And I think also like already at the ground level at university, you should encourage people to get educated and to be like open to debate. And right now it feels like the trend is in the other direction that people are trying to like young students are very sensitive to open debates. I don't know if you agree on that, but.

Cancel culture is everywhere. And it's not like a woke left in the US I don't know. Sweden has. Every country has different names for liberals or like the socialist side versus like the conservative fascist side, whether it's left right or left colors or whatever.

But the right is just as bad. I think that's what I'm saying.

Right. They're both just as bad in the US Right now. The right is blaming the left for being cancel culture. But you see right cancel culture all the time. I'm going to unfollow you because you said something I disagree with. I'm like, what kind of an idiot does that? Like I'm going to follow you because you said something that I disagree with because you might be right.

Yeah. And traditionally it's been the right who's been like trying to rid Hollywood of communists and trying to ridicule, is trying to ban flag burning and all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of interesting that the left has picked up this very unsuccessful strategy.

Is that happening in Sweden and in Europe as well as in the us.

It'S not nearly as bad in Sweden and in Scandinavia and from what I heard, it's not as bad in continental Europe as well as it is in the U.S. i think I read something, I think Niall Ferguson wrote something that it was kind of liberating to come to a European university. I think it was him that wrote it. Otherwise, I'm sorry, but. So I don't know why that is, but maybe it's because there are so many different cultures that it's More difficult.

Maybe that's why. Because I think it's odd that you say this person can't come and speak at the university because I don't like them. I'm like, well, maybe someone else likes them. And it's an institute of learning and you can vehemently disagree.

But make him change his mind, maybe even.

Yeah, right. But I'm completely confused by the whole situation. But maybe that's because I'm only biologically under 30. Chronologically, I'm older than that. So talk to me about epidemiology because that's one thing I like about your book is, is you talk about what happens with moral and ethical and political problems came about because of our ability to look at big populations of people in a way we couldn't do before. Walk me through your thinking about those kinds of moral and ethical problems.

Yeah, the way I see it, these kinds of problems have always been inherent in epidemiology. It started already with smallpox inoculation. It wasn't even vaccination back then. It was just like a way to immunize people. And it's like extremely dangerous to do. But it was also very beneficial if you were inoculated. So you had to like bring in mathematicians to figure out whether it was right or wrong to, to expose people to this. And there were some really famous mathematicians who argued for mass inoculation. But. But then some other philosophers said, like, yeah, but it doesn't really work like that because like, for the, the government has like a million lives and for the government it's, it's a pretty easy calculation. But if you're just like one person, you only have like one life. So the risk on the downside is like completely different for like one person. So I thought those philosophical debates from the 17th and 18th century were really interesting. And it was kind of the same thing surfacing over and over again. And this was maybe the first time that we didn't have this debate that there were just some people who said this is the right way to do it. You should just follow.

What concerned me is that when there's full disclosure of risks and all that stuff, you can match a risk to a person. So an epidemiologist could have and should have said, it looks like the highest risk population is of course, older people who have other comorbidities. So let's apply one set of risk reward equations there versus the other one for kids and the whole thing in the middle. And also if you have. Have a condition that hasn't been tested, then don't do it. And that is how I always thought this worked. And the fact that we now had politicians coming in globally and just saying you're going to do it even if you're in a high risk situation. I know one person very well who nearly died from getting a set of vaccines. And that can happen. It's documented, it's not common. So this is a person who by all means, doctor's opinions shouldn't be revaccinated, yet wasn't allowed to basically participate in society because of it, even though I thought that's why we were doing it. So something happened in, in the global consciousness to not take care of people in that situation, to almost look at them as pariahs.

Yeah.

At least that's what that's. Was that a Swedish thing as well, or. No, you guys just didn't worry about it.

We had a. We didn't have a vaccine mandate, but we had like a vaccine passport, so to speak, for like, for just a couple of weeks where if you wanted to go to a concert, you had to be with more than 100 people, you had to be vaccinated, and if you want to. Wanted to go like a big theater, you have to be vaccinator, but just for a brief period of time. And a lot of public health profiles were really skeptical of this because it really broke with the Swedish tradition when it came to vaccinations, because vaccinations have always been voluntary for like 100 years in Sweden. And it's been working pretty well because I think it's a really important principle that you should, you should be able to take care of your own body. And it doesn't matter if you make a really bad decision, because at least that decision is yours.

This is Sweden. And there's just one word that says that. It's called vodka. Right?

Yeah. I mean, people do all kinds of stupid things.

Then you're in charge of yourself, right?

Yeah, but, but, but the really interesting thing is that like the, that Denmark had all these restrictions because they've always had a very libertarian culture when it comes to alcohol and all the kinds that they haven't really believed in, in alcohol regulation or anything like that. So I think it's like really, I. I posted this thing on Twitter a year ago, like in a Danish newspaper, like during the same. In the. In.

In.

I think it was on the same day even that a politician said that it was immoral to not let 15 year olds drink alcohol.

And.

Wow. And at the same time they have this like really Harsh restrictions against people who don't do the right thing when it came to Covid. So I actually have, like, a really interesting story about, like, from. I have this friend who, just, like you, has. She has an American husband and she took two shots in Sweden and then went to the U.S. but they didn't count her shots from Sweden, so she had to, like, do it all over again. So then they have, like, this system to really, to make sure that you're vaccinated, but you could also have had a system where you just trusted people to do the right thing because she wanted to do the right thing for herself and what she thought was the right thing for society. So. And to be honest, I don't really care if, like, if other people are vaccinated or not. If. I mean, it's such a personal decision. And I don't care what medicines anyone else is on. It's, like, none of my business. And I think it's really strange that suddenly it was everyone's business what medicine you took and what medicine I took. I think something really strange happened.

It's very weird because there is this intellectual bypass and some people listening to this will probably still get mad that I say this, but let's assume that the vaccine provides protection, right? And there's timelines and curves and all sorts of stuff, but let's just make that a given. At that point, you don't need to worry about whether someone else did it or not, right?

Yeah.

But what people are admitting is, well, it doesn't provide very good protection or something. And so I finally just, I. I decided I'm just going to divorce myself from that whole debate because there's no winning. Because this isn't about logic. It's about pure emotion. Tell listeners the story of what happened in 2010 with swine flu. A lot of Americans don't know about that.

Well, there was this really big scare in the media about the new pandemic coming pretty much like the early weeks of COVID but just after a couple of weeks, most people understand that this isn't going to be as bad. But then through all these kinds of contracts that Sweden had signed up, just because there was another scare three years earlier, Sweden had to buy all these vaccines. And then these calculations that kind of turned out to be a little bit wrong. They show that it was beneficial to have this vaccine administered to everyone. But then it turned out that lots of people, especially young kids, got narcolepsy from the vaccine.

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Lots of people, especially young kids, got narcolepsy from the vaccine. And there's still so much we don't know about this, how prevalent it is, but there have been people who have gotten like money paid out and everything from the government. So it's a pretty big scar in Swedish society. And a lot of things have been written about this and it's kind of a scandal that Swedes still live with. I think.

There'S a really interesting, really interesting perspective on that. I think a lot of Americans are saying it has to be because some portion of the Swedish population is like, you know, screw you, I'm not going to do that. But the reality is it's just a, it's a different government system that, that enabled a different decision from the rest of the world. When things kind of flipped over, at least externally, we were all told, oh, you know, now people are asking for masks in, in Sweden. They're mad at the government. Was that real or was that mostly American news newspapers?

I think it was mostly American newspapers, yeah. I mean, it was mostly the press corps that flipped a little bit and started asking much more critical questions. But when it came to restrictions, there weren't really a big difference. I think the biggest restriction was that large gatherings were banned after three or four months. So there were no soccer games with spectators and no concerts. But when you think about it, I mean, it totally killed some industries. But when it comes to society, it's not really a big thing, like, especially compared to school closures, all those kinds of things. And when it came to concerts, no bands for touring anyway. So it didn't really matter that much. But it was really bad for some small theaters around Stockholm and all that. So they took a big hit. For sure.

It destroyed a bunch of businesses, but far less economic damage in Sweden. From what I saw from some numbers, it was like half as much devastation for companies in the economy compared to neighboring countries that had bigger shutdowns.

Yeah. And the really interesting thing is that we kind of live with the benefits now as well, because in Germany they're still talking about whether when to start wearing like, whether or not to stop wearing masks during, like. And how to like, test kids to school in the fall. And. And we are like completely done with it, so. And there was this evaluation of the measures that was published in Germany two weeks ago, and it basically said that there was like pretty much no evidence for these restrictions. And so they have started this debate just now.

So I was just in the Netherlands and there you'd see no one's wearing masks other than maybe a few people who are worried or something. But there's still signs everywhere and people just ignore them. They ignore them in the airports, they ignore them everywhere. Like, oh, those are old. But it seems like the signs don't come down. Are there still signs everywhere in Sweden saying mask and distance and all that kind of crap, or have they come down?

No, they have all come down, actually. They even declassified the disease. So there's like no legal basis for institution instituting any restrictions.

So it's basically. It's a cold.

Yeah. So if they want to. So if they would want to do restrictions again, they will have to start this whole legislation work again. So that's kind of a protection against new measures.

Very interesting. So let's hope the rest of the world is listening to this and does that too, because it's hard to argue at this point that all of the. Just the trauma that came about from our response was worth it. And the reason that we can argue that is because in Sweden, where you didn't subject yourselves to that, you actually had better than average results. In fact, substantially better than average. And people can argue all kinds of reasons all day long, but the bottom line is that if the restrictions were really necessary, you should have. Even with a healthy population, you should have faced at least three or four times the death rate of other countries who did all these crazy things. And you did.

Yeah.

And you can also compare it to. There was this really influential report that was the driving force behind the UK and the US really instituting lockdowns on a larger scale, and that had like a Prediction for Sweden, and It said that 96,000 people, or 84,000, depending on which column you use in their spreadsheet, said we're gonna perish within just three months. And the actual result was 6,000. So they pretty much. I don't know, what is 96 through 6? Well, they basically, it was like 15 fold. And I think the problem is that the world hasn't really gotten the message, because if you compare the level of interest that Sweden garnered compared to now, there were all these stories in the New York Times calling it the pariah state and all that you would assume that they would come back and visit Sweden two years after, three years after, and see what actually happened, because it was all guesswork back then, and now you have the result. So I don't really understand or I know why they don't do it, but it sounds like people won't subscribe to the New York Times because they say they're wrong. I mean, I think it would just be like an honest thing to do.

It would be remarkably honest if any news organization did that. And I've seen the New York Times retract things before, but usually the retractions are on page seven and the headline was on page one. And corrections oftentimes happen there. And not to pick on them specifically, you know, it's actually probably much worse at the Washington Post. You know, all newspapers have processes and things like that, but they're different than scientific journals for sure. And then you go to somewhere like Facebook and yeah, when are they ever going to retract a shadow ban on someone? And I experienced about a 90% reduction in new accounts seeing my content during the pandemic. Who knows for saying this? I may re experience that, in which case that's what it is. If you follow me, make sure you put me on whatever notify, because maybe you'll see it, maybe you won't. Um, but.

But just to go back to this unwillingness to, to change your mind, I think maybe this is a little bit different because it's such a big burden to carry that you. You were, you were advocating for shutting down schools, and you even managed to shut down schools for a year, even in the US and it was for no reason at all. That's a pretty big burden to carry. It's like much worse than being wrong about, say, whether Amazon stock price will be $2,000 more. I mean, you can live with that kind of error, but it's really difficult to live with this error. Shutting down schools for no reason.

Yeah, it's a really big thing. What about traveling into Sweden? I mean, can someone without a vaccine get into Sweden?

Yeah, I believe it's like all like open for everyone that would be allowed to come here anyway. Like in three years ago, if Sweden.

Were to join NATO, would that change anything, do you think? I mean, you're already in the EU and you have different policies in other EU states for, for vaccination entry. Do you think that, that that kind of alliance would have any effect on epidemiology now?

As far as I know, NATO is just like a military alliance. I'm not totally sure like exactly what's in the treaties.

Okay, got it. I'm not an expert on that, but what I do know is that in the US we oftentimes use treaties to bypass the constitution. Oh, we have to do it because we signed a treaty, even though the treaty made us do something that the constitution does allow. So I'm kind of wondering if, I.

Think you, you're on to something because the, the head of the EU commission, she called for mandatory vaccinations and also the German chancellor also called for that for a while. So I think a lot of people are scared about this kind of like homogenous like public health regime throughout the eu and I think it would be unfortunate for a number of reasons, but mostly because I think we have to value the fact that different countries do different things. I know some American constitutionalists are a little bit pissed off with Louis Brandeis concept of laboratories of democracy, but I think it's a pretty beautiful concept that different states do different things and maybe one state fails completely and then the other states know that this is not something to try or maybe they try out something that's really successful and the other states can copy it. So it's like a really good, good thing to find to come up with new IDs or to even not use new IDs.

There are some lessons from spending much of my career designing fault tolerant, highly scalable systems and technology. And so fault tolerance means you can handle anything the world brings your way. In fact, I would also say my job now as a biohacker is building fault tolerant humans. So you can handle anything. And part of that is if everyone is identical. It's like monocropping potatoes. One virus comes up and it kills everything. But if you have 2,000 species of potatoes, some of them will die and some of them will win. And this works both for governments and it also works for cultures. Yeah, I would hope that we never have a monoculture on the planet, because it'll probably blow itself up. And I hope that we never have only one form of government on the planet, because it'll probably devolve into authoritarianism, because all governments throughout history have done that in less than 250 years. Like, that's kind of the record for as long as there's been one single free thing. Basically, that state falls and another one pops up. So if we were to have one culture and one government across the entire planet, it'll probably fail because of a lack of diversity. Yeah, so I'm. And that's just. That's why we have different operating systems, we have different companies, and I don't know, maybe. Maybe I have a narrow mindset. If Elon Musk succeeds and we get a different planet going, then we can have two different planets competing on culture and government. But until then, I think we might want to be cautious on that front.

Yeah, I mean, that brings us back to this whole value of diversity. The stuff you talked about with potatoes. That's why the Irish starved, because they had just one kind of potato.

That's exactly why. And of course you would know that more than most Americans who aren't Irish, because it's more present in European consciousness. And it's also affecting McDonald's right now, too, because they're monocropping. So you see these mistakes repeated throughout history. If you study history, and that's one of the differences between Sweden and. And the US and just between most European countries in the US is that if you study European history, there's all kinds of stuff that's happened. And if you study US History, being that it's an isolated continent with two borders that haven't required defending in hundreds of years, it's just a different story. So I find that you can actually have a conversation about history in Europe. And there's so much knowledge about different ways of things that in a typical American, you know, there's corn in Kansas, but you might not really have gone deep on it. So maybe it's an educational superiority in Europe or just an environmental difference. And my final question for you is, from your perspective, Johan, is Sweden somehow a pariah either in Europe or in the world's eyes? You know, if you walk around and you flash your Swedish passport, you could say, oh, you're the guys who were rebels during the pandemic. Or do people just not care in general?

People don't really care. Like when you go, I've only been abroad like twice since the pandemic started, actually, not counting Scandinavia and like some people are really interested in what went down, but maybe they're a little bit more open minded. So there could be some selection bias going on. But I think people like normal, average people, they have no vested interest in whether to use face masks or vaccine mandates. This is something that politicians, epidemiologists and Twitter people argued about. I think most normal people with normal jobs are just curious, pretty much.

Okay, so mostly curious. I still like to think that most people are good people and that all people are subject to emotions, especially fear, which is the strongest one, and that maybe some of our decisions were driven by that, but that we have the ability to calm down, set that aside and be curious instead of just be angry all the time. So I'm going to stick with that view of reality and hope it's the correct one.

Yeah, we can make it the correct one. We can.

So thank you, Johan, for sharing some information about just how the decision to go a different path came down in Sweden and what the outcomes were, which is really cool.

Thanks for having me.

If you like today's episode, I would love it if you let me know about it. One thing you could do if you really want to go deep is you could read Johan's book called the Herd where he goes through the decision making about this. And I want you to tell me whether this kind of how do we get here episode is of use to you. Whether it satisfied your curiosity, was interesting or what you want to know more about, go to daveasprey.com podcast or podcasts, something like that. It's easy to find and tell me or hit me up on with a dm. I just want to know, do you like this stuff? Because I'm curious. I'm curious about everything, but I want to know what you're curious about so we can have that over overlap of curiosity. And I can have fun and learn and so can you and so can our guests. And as you can tell, Johan is curious. He's a journalist, a writer, and seriously, if you're tweaked by the pandemic and our response to it, maybe reading the Herd will be a dose of logic and understanding for you and you can take those lessons and put them to work in your government, wherever you are. I'll see you on the next episode. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

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