Corona’s impact on Swedish welfare in Sweden today
By: Léa Grauslund
Tags: Corona

Corona’s impact on Swedish welfare in Sweden today

The corona virus was classified on January 30, 2020 for a threat to human health, according to UNICEF. The virus was detected in China in the city of Wuhan and the spread increased not only in China but globally. The virus is divided into several groups of viruses, therefore there are seven different viruses that can infect humans and can therefore be deadly. According to Kry, the risk of being infected is very high through a so-called drip infection, of coughing and sneezing, and therefore restrictions have been set to try to reduce the risk such as travel bans in the EU. The report of May 25, a total of 4395 deaths, should have been affected by the Corona epidemic in Sweden and the Government has also decided to ban visiting places in places such as the elderly.

This virus has obviously affected many aspects of health care, as you now have to be extremely careful about the high spread of infection. If you are tested positive at the hospital today, you get a completely isolated room and if you can’t do it you will die in solitude. This is something there is a lot of criticism about when it is considered wrong to let elderly or corona sufferers die alone without a final farewell.

Intensive care is something that has received a lot of criticism during the epidemic. Intensive care is the place where individuals who are extremely severely ill can get a place with an advanced type of treatment. The problem with this is that there are only a number of places and in this case corona can not suffice. Now during this crisis, there is more need for respirators which is not possible for everyone which creates criticism. According to some interviews and sources, it has been found that respirators are given to people who are more likely to survive, ie people at risk. Thus, sometimes something seriously ill receives no care or this intensive care, since the individual’s risk of dying is higher. This can be high blood pressure, diabetes or obesity. What you want to achieve with being very pesky with your places is, according to the state, so that you can save as many ”healthy” individuals as you can and who may be young, etc. Because of this, you always have 20% of places open for your acute cases.

Another impact that has emerged within the health care system due to Corona is the re-prioritization in health care. This means focusing on other necessary cases instead of perhaps another patient who has been ill for a while. This could be called a conflict of values according to both philosophers Gustaf Arrhenius and Nils-Eric Sahlin, who participates in one in a podcast about just priorities. There are problems against the elderly, the affected, the young, etc. According to a health care law, there are three principles that emerged in the 1990s, the human dignity principle, the need for solidarity principle and the cost-effectiveness principle, and these are what should show the doctors to whom to choose, which should also be prioritized in co-financed Swedish care. which has worked great until now. When intensive care is greater than doctors can provide, other principles must be found over what should be prioritized. Sahlin also states that one must know what to prioritize before the demand curve comes and strikes back.

Here, John Rawls, the philosopher, is drawn in with the idea that one should give priority to one another, thus choosing what one feels for then and not with more depth.

I personally think that the intensive care sites that exist are sufficient but that they are prioritized in the wrong way as you always have 20% of the vacancies but choose to save the unused than to someone who a doctor is considered to be less ill and can then reject the sick person. Here, there is a lot of criticism and I also think there should be, because who really knows who is doing right or wrong. Some feel that one should help others want to minimize, but at the end of the day, it is up to the doctors to follow the three principles and adhere to them as well as possible. The two topics I raised belong in one way, a lack of intensive care sites and who should be given priority to get these. As we expand our locations, we have come to the conclusion that more staff is needed, which will be difficult to do. In the first part, they address why not everyone gets a seat in this place despite the 20% open seats that are ready for everyone. The second part talks about general health care, who should be prioritized and what follows Sweden for a care system to work, where three main principles are addressed and discussed by two well-known philosophers. If you manage to prioritize better and bring in more doctors and workers in this industry, you will be able to expand your places more and reduce priorities and bring in everyone evenly so that you can get the care you need.

Léa Gorwa Grauslund