This is absolutely magical. In Sweden, there is a massive outpouring of hate for a man called Anders Tegnell, who as Statsepidemiolog (state epidemiologist) is responsible for Sweden's COVID-19 policy. The attitude is the same as that of the quoted "far-rightists" in the article quoted above, and established Swedish media is making the exact same argument as the New York Times: people should trust the experts, the Far Right is trying to undermine science, etc. The hilarious part is that Tegnell's line, held with autistic and scientific precision through this whole affair, has been literally the same as Trump's original one (even slightly laxer): this is sort of like a flu, the economy must be weighed against the actual danger of the virus (which is seen as limited), no too radical action should be taken, etc.
This bizarre situation has, once again hilariously, led to Swedish New York Times equivalent Dagens Nyheter publishing very excited, angry criticism of the government's policies - which in turn caused other parts of Swedish media to accuse Dagens Nyheter of populism and an unscientific attitude. This becomes even more amusing since Dagens Nyheter has literally the same perspective as most Swedish "Far Right" online publications - i.e. that the Swedish government and its experts don't know what they are doing and are playing an extremely dangerous game by not responding forcefully enough to the novel Corona virus.
Obviously, this is simply a question of who holds power (Dagens Nyheter is simply riffing off of NYT). Even so, it is really, really funny that if COVID-19 would prove less dangerous than at first assumed, then the "winners" of the controversy would be Trump, Bolsonaro, the Swedish Left-Wing government and basically no-one else (or perhaps Holland is still in the chill-out camp). If it is extremely dangerous, and lax policies lead to disaster (as seems at least very possible, considering the development in Sweden the past few days), then the government of Sweden and probably also Bolsonaro are pretty much fucked (Trump may pull through, given the fact that he's changed his stance so radically - still, it may cost him reelection). The winning side will then consist of the New York Times, the American Left wing twitterati, most of the European Far Right, and a large number of governments across the world - democratic or not.
As a side note, the "trust the experts" meme seems retarded if you don't have a fairly united global expertise. Which we really, really don't on the question of COVID-19. In Sweden, the expert opinion is that all governments that close schools or borders do so because of populist pressure, and that the damage to the economy from shutting down too much is way worse than any consequence of COVID-19. In the US, this exact opinion is apparently seen as "far right".
