Month: July 2020

Border restrictions may be a’changin

Nordic countries and covid
Sweden’s neighbors less than delighted with Swedish tourists
pic: Nordiclifescience.org

Sweden’s borders aren’t closed, and everyone is welcome to Sweden. Swedes, on the other hand, are not at all welcome in any one of countries it borders. No one wants Sweden’s infection rate to become their infection rate. Or, as the Finnish Minister for home affairs Maria Ohisalo put it in DN, “We must continue to be pretty careful. Finland has sacrificed a lot to decrease infections.”

And now for some covid statistics

In other words, they’re not going to blow all their hard work keeping their death toll down just to let Swedes come in and infect them with covid. (Finland’s stats: 7,234 covid cases, 329 deaths.)

The same attitude has also been found in Norway, (Norwegian stats: 8,954 covid cases, 251 dead), and Denmark (Danish stats: 12,916 covid cases, and 609 deaths).

Sweden’s stats (73,858 covid cases and 5,482 dead) are just not impressing our neighbors for some reason. The hope that herd immunity would quickly establish itself or that the economy would be spared has so far not impressed anyone either. The New York Times quotes Jacob F. Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, saying “They literally gained nothing. It’s a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.”

These negative reviews have really gotten the dander up of Sweden’s leading politicians and the Swedish Public Health Authority. And quite possibly, the border situations will soon change.

border restrictions changing

SvD reports, that Denmark is now lightening up on their restrictions. Swedes living in Skåne, Blekinge and Västerbotten may be allowed over the border starting Saturday morning. Norway’s leading daily paper Verdens Gang reports that also Norway might open its borders to Swedes living in Skåne, Blekinge and Kronoberg. (Apparently, Västerbotten and Kronoberg are not considered same same to Norway and Denmark.) Finland will get back to us in about two weeks when they review their restrictions again.

Teacher absolved by Swedish supreme court

school hallway
The teacher did not violate the student when he was removed from the hallway
pic: twenty20

It took three years to sort it, but the final verdict was “Not guilty.” When teacher Sören Claesson saw that a student was blocking the passage of students in a hall of the school, and refused to move, Sören put a wrestler’s grip on the student and moved him. For this, Claesson was accused of violating the student’s personal integrity, and the school was sued.

The case boiled down to whether or not the teacher was allowed to physically move the student. The plaintiff was Child and School Student representative, or BEO (Barn- och elevombudet). BEO had previously lost two earlier processes in the lower courts, but they chose to push it all the way to the Swedish supreme court. The reason, they said, was because although it had been previously ruled that teachers could in some cases use physical force to intervene in some situations, it had not been tried in the case of a student that had psychoneurological difficulties. Due to other aspects of personal integrity, only some teachers knew of the student’s diagnosis, and Claesson had not been informed.

SvD reported that, according the Teacher’s Union (Lärarförbundet), six of ten teachers are hesitant to get involved in a physical situation because they aren’t sure what rights they have. At the same time, teachers have a duty of supervision (tillsynsplikt) which doesn’t allow them to walk away from a situation. “It is good that we have now gotten a precedent-setting ruling (prejudicerande dom) and I hope that it means that teachers can feel more empowered” remarked the Union’s vice-chair Maria Rönn.

“Hopefully,” said Claesson, “this will lead to more teachers daring to get involved instead of putting on blinders.” 

For more posts on schools, see
law interpretation erases school information
09 Jan. – religious schools targeted by the government
18 Dec. – a new school plan
27 sep. – no school news is good news
Mon. 19/8 – GDPR takes down school photos