Chapter Six - Haverister / The Truth Is out There

Pissed off as I was about the unprofessionalism of Naucler at el, I was happy to see that they received quite a bit of push-back in the Swedish media. One of the best texts written at the time is probably this one by Victor Malm: https://www.expressen.se/kultur/victor-malm/coronahaveristerna-ar-en-skam-for-sverige/. I'm not sure if it's from him that I picked up the term "haverist" and I also don't know if I read the article when it was first published; I can't find any references to it in my tweets at the time, but I would have wholeheartedly agreed with it (and I still do). It's mind-boggling that some of these distinguished scientists are still at it to this very day, see for example this fine gentleman and professor:

No matter how you look at it, this is the comment of a troll, in reply to a post by a troll. If I were still a teacher, I don't think I would have been on Twitter, or at least that I wouldn't have tweeted in my own name. These people are public figures and when you're an academic, the truth and facts are literally your job. By behaving like this they undermine science (never mind their own reputation). Perhaps it comes across as puritanical, but that's how I felt and still feel. It might come across as pretentious, but I really feel that education and science is sacred. I'm not religious, at all, so science is the only thing I really "believe" in. I hate it when politicians play fast and loose with the truth, even if I'm generally inclined to agree with the politics of the party they represent. However, I still understand it's part of the political game. As a scientist, you're supposed to stand above that:

I also feel these people bear a lot of responsibility for how the general debate developed. On Twitter it was bound to go to pot anyway, it's an inherent feature of this medium, but the tone elsewhere, in more proper forums also became polarised very quickly and it was a shame, because a less infected public debate would probably have helped - behind the hyperbole, the outright errors and the personal attacks their arguments were not entirely without merit. A constructive, nuanced debate could have helped; it would be preposterous to believe that the Public Health Agency was 100% correct about everything in such a rapidly evolving situation. For example, perhaps the attitude of the public health agency was a bit too laid back - one could speculate that if people who'd been to northern Italy had been told to stay at home for a week and if the Eurovision contest had been cancelled, perhaps the curve would have been a little flatter? (Although it should be noted that one of the main critics, Fredrik Elgh (who will feature a lot more later), agreed with the Public Health Agency and thought that the decision to let the Eurovision event go ahead was correct). This is what I said at the time:

Thankfully, there were others in the academic community who pointed out the flaws in the arguments made by "the 22 scientists", as this group of critics came to be known. In my opinion, one of the best replies to the "civil servants without talent" article is this one from Anders Björkman: https://www.dn.se/debatt/ett-ovederhaftigt-och-direkt-oanstandigt-angrepp/. He not only calls out the irresponsible personal attacks, but also points out the fact that some countries where lockdowns had been introduced still had higher death rates than Sweden, something "the 22 scientists" conveniently fail to mention. (Today, more than five years later, I think it can safely be concluded that there's no correlation between the harshness of the lockdowns and the pandemic outcomes.) Another very good reply to "that letter to the editor" was written by Göran Bengtsson, professor emeritus of ecology in Lund: https://www.dn.se/debatt/de-22-forskarnas-resonemang-ar-ovetenskapligt/. The conclusion is a thing of beauty: "'De folkvalda... måste gripa in, det finns inget annat val.' Hur vet ni det? Ni är väl forskare och inte bara tyckare?" ["Our elected politicians...need to step in, there's no other choice" How do you know that? Surely you're scientists and not just pundits?"] I don't subscribe to the big daily Swedish newspapers, DN and SvD, so I never actually saw this text until today, but it perfectly sums up my objections to the arguments made by "the 22 scientists" - there was very little worth calling science in their text. Quite tellingly "the 22" had to add a clarification to the text after it had been published, in which they write i.a. "De citerade siffrorna i sig är i vårt tycke mindre viktiga än den principiella utveckling av pandemin vi försöker peka på." [The quoted numbers are in our opinion less important than the fundamental development of the pandemic we are trying to highlight.] Yes, who cares about correct data, eh? As Bengtsson puts it: "[A]rtikeln gör en del avkall på ett vetenskapligt förhållningssätt till analys av debattämnet." [The article departs somewhat from a scientific approach in its analysis of the debate topic.] If anything, I find this description too kind.

Agnes Wold, who was and would remain an important voice in the debate for a long time - and who would also attract the ire of the critics of the Swedish strategy - tweeted a link to another reply critical of "the 22":

In the replies to Wold's tweet there are a number of people who made the same points I was trying to make, for example this one by Stefan Park about Naucler's lack of professionalism:

It was good to see that I was not alone in my thinking. I have already mentioned Björn Fagerstedt (see chapter 3), whose tweets I first encountered on April 3; another person who would play a prominent role in the Swedish Twitter pandemic made his debut with a reply to Agnes's tweet:

I just was the record to show that, although two days late to the party, I was there more or less from the very beginning (see chapter 5 for full context regarding the deleted tweet from Naucler):

Shortly thereafter two other important characters in this narrative started appearing.

Swedehawk was a very sensible voice and I was happy to see him (presumably) in my feed. Twitter seems to have lost its appeal to him and he hasn't tweeted since July 2024. Who could blame him?

In the same thread another gentleman delighted me with the zingers "Naucler meltdown" and "stråltant" [radiation woman]. He stopped tweeting about the pandemic a good while ago. Sensible. These days he's back to mainly ranting about football and Hammarby. You win some, you lose some.

All in all, at this stage things were slowly beginning to improve in Sweden. ICU admissions had reached a plateau and Sweden had got through the worst - flattened the curve -  without a lockdown, and there were people out there who understood that the critics had got it wrong. I believe I thought it was only a matter of time before it would be generally accepted that the Swedish strategy had worked. At the beginning of May I tweeted this: 

How wonderfully, preposterously naïve of me! And without even a hint of irony, as well...

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