On June 17th, as new covid cases declined in the UK, Sweden's increased and Sweden posted more new C virus cases than the UK. This is despite the fact that the UK has 6.5 times as many people. This is especialy surprising given that overall, Sweden is on average much less densely populated and thus less naturally prone to easy covid transmission than the UK (and as is widely known, neighbouring Denmark Norway and Finland have had much lower death rates).
But maybe it is less surprising if you factor in the very ageist profile of Swedish political representation and the rampant ageism that is said to happen in Sweden. Despite the fact that the over 65s are a quarter of the Swedish population only 2 per cent of MPs in the Parliament, the Rikstag, are over 65 and old age discrimination is intense.
Indeed whilst in the UK it seems to be the political right that opposes (and. no doubt, weakens) the UK's restrictive policy response, in Sweden, things are such that the nationalist Sweden Democrats are attacking the Social Democrat led Government in Sweden for its 'relaxed' attitude to the coronavirus crisis.
Of course there's many in the UK eager to promote the Swedish solution as a preferred strategy, but alas it often seems to go along with tropes about how the disease is mostly the problem of old men who don't have long to live anyway. Apart from the fact that many young people are worried about getting seriously ill, these ageist stereotypes, which seem to have taken over Swedish politics, are misguided. In fact the people dying of coronavirus likely have many years still to live, as discussed by the recent radio programme 'More or Less'.
But perhaps even worse than this the biggest losers of this trope are older women who are nearly as vulnerable to the old men to the coronavirus. Let's put it this way, if you are a 70-80 year old woman you might be 20-30% less vulnerable than a man of the same age, but you are still hundreds of times more likely to die than someone in their 20s. Old women are becoming invisible in this crisis. And the poorer you are, the worse are your chances.
Sweden has achieved much in terms of gender equality in the Riksdag in that practically half of the MPs are now female - but the success in sidelining the old males has obscured the fact that old women (who are usually poorer and less powerful than older men anyway) have very little representation. Gender equality is a vitally important aim, but it should go hand in hand with reducing ageism, not increasing it. More women MPs should mean an effort to get more older women MPs as well.
There's a big problem here. What it means in practice is that old people are now, in view of the covid crisis, are being ever more oppressed through what should be called severe institutionalist ageism in Sweden. There's some pretty torrid tales that have come out of Sweden of the old being denied oxygen to fight off coronavirus. It would be disastrous politically if this state of affairs led to a far right party taking power in Sweden. But that now looks like becoming a serious possibility, and rampant agesim will be a significant cause of this.
Good Dave!
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