Sweden, throughout this pandemic, it's the one country that's done things differently.

Last spring, a scientist scurried to understand the virus and governments did their best to

control it. We watched a wave of countries across the world, like slow falling dominoes

going into lockdown one by one. But as the rest of Europe emptied the streets and

batten down the hatches, Sweden was the exception.

While much of the world is locking down in efforts to contain the spread of the virus,

not all the countries are taking the same approach. In Sweden, life is just a little quieter

than normal. Many businesses and schools are open.

They issued some advice, put in place a few restrictions, but apart from that, life carried

on more or less as normal. It's been held up as a paragon by libertarians all over the

world. And now, a year on, we have enough data to see how Sweden actually did. Was there

approach a success? Or did it cost too many lives?

We're used to being top of the class when it comes to health issues.

You're listening to stories of our times from the times and the Sunday times. I'm Manveen

Rana. Today, the curious case of Sweden revisited.

Back in April last year, on this podcast, I spoke to Louise Callahan, the Sunday Times

Middle East correspondent. At the time, she was isolating on the west coast of her native

Sweden.

And of course, it's strange talking to friends in London who are under lockdown, they're

saying, well, I've barely left the house for weeks. It's enormously different to say

the UK.

If you look at almost all polls done as Swedish people, you'll see that they trust the

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