The Curious Case Of COVID-19 In Sweden
ZAKARIA: And we are back with the Trump administration's economic and trade adviser to the president, Peter Navarro. Peter, in that interview with Neil Cavuto on the 25th of April, you said, when asked -- when Cavuto asked you how do you explain the president's many, many statements praising the Chinese. It's not -- you know, it's not one, two, three, it's tweet after tweet saying they've been transparent, praising Xi Jinping, thanking the Chinese for their cooperation. You said, well, there's a difference between public pronouncements and what you actually know. Are you implying that the president's tweets are not truthful?</s>NAVARRO: Fareed, look, President Donald J. Trump has made it a practice of getting along with world leaders, including Xi Jinping, Putin, Merkel, all the leaders in the world. And it's useful when push comes to shove for the president to be able to pick that phone up and talk directly to the leaders. That's all I'm saying. I can also tell you that there's no one who understands the China problem better and longer than Donald J. Trump. He precedes me in terms of my research dating back to the early 2000s in understanding the problems with China. So, please, let's not go there. But one of the things I'd love to talk about, because I'm not into the gloom and doom stuff, is something that happened Wednesday, Fareed, which I think is a historical event. I was in Kokomo with the vice president visiting a plant. There was a combined venture with General Motors and a small high tech company from Seattle called Ventec, and I saw the future. I saw a president who had created the strongest economy in the world, have a pathway to rebuilding this economy, which now has manufactured unemployment, but which will have a manufacturing renaissance. And here's what happened. The short story is 17 days it took for GM and Ventec to stand up a factory and an additional three days for UPS and Admiral Polowczyk and FEMA to get those ventilators into hospitals in Gary and Chicago. Here's the bigger story, what GM did was they went to Ventec's facility, 3-D imaged that. And then they 3-D imaged all 700 components of Ventec's supply chain. And they immediately replicated that plant in Kokomo. They went across their whole supply chain, repurposed that supply chain to make those 700 components. And those ventilators were made in 17 days, made in USA. 97 percent of the content that was in those ventilators was made in the USA. What does that tell me as an economist? It tells me that as we move through the structural shifts we're going to have to navigate very carefully as the world has shifted and the economy has shifted, we see a path forward with this repurposing. The innovation, the manufacturing, the flexibility and the speed with which this was done was breathtaking. And I found it comical that a day which will be marked in the history books, on Wednesday, was not marked in the newspapers. All the newspapers wanted to talk about is who and who wasn't wearing masks that day. But that, Fareed, when you go back in time 50 years from now, that will be the turning point in the recovery of the American economy, bringing its manufacturing capacity onshore and basically restoring this economy in a manufacturing economy that will make us stronger and more resilient.</s>ZAKARIA: All right. Well, you got a chance to tell that story. So let me ask you, every expert says that if we're going to open up, you need testing. You need testing on a mass scale, you need testing where people are getting prioritized correctly, access for those who need it. And most people -- Bill Gates was on the show last week, said the U.S. testing -- our system is chaotic. Let me give you the test per thousand. Even now, when the administration and President Trump is touting the testing as great success, here's where we are. We're testing 20 per thousand. Iceland tests 146 per thousand. Germany 30, Russia, 27, Italy, 34, Australia 23. Should we really be at the back of the list on testing if we're going to open up the economy?</s>NAVARRO: I think that you might be challenged on those statistics by some others in the administration. But let me look at this, Fareed, from where I sit. My mission here at the administration during this pandemic has been to focus on making sure we have a supply chain that delivers things like testing and ventilators. So if you take the case of the ventilators, six weeks ago, people were saying we didn't have enough ventilators, and what I was doing across the street working with FEMA and HHS and people here in the building was making sure we did. And now by June we're going to have over 100,000 ventilators. Nobody who needed a ventilator has been denied one. Now with testing, Fareed, it's important, there's virus testing, there's also antibodies testing. The more we can do of each over time the more we'll be able to surveil and protect the American people to keep our workplaces open. The good news here, and it's a very good news, is just as with ventilators, as that curve went up, with production, we are doing the same with virus testing and antibodies testing. So I see a bright future ahead on that as we move into the summer and a way to a possible problem in the fall, we are doing what we need to do as fast as we can do it.</s>ZAKARIA: Well, Peter, we are out of time. And I really enjoyed having this conversation. I hope we can have more. I continue to feel that the countries that seem to read your memo, even -- you know, even though it wasn't meant for them metaphorically, the South Koreans, the Taiwans, the Hong Kongs, the Singapores of the world seemed to have done well by reacting quickly. And I just wish we had reacted as quickly as they did.</s>NAVARRO: We think we did. We're acting quickly and as President Donald J. Trump moves stuff in Trump time, we are moving mountains in this crisis.</s>ZAKARIA: We will --</s>NAVARRO: And Fareed, I appreciate the time today. I appreciate it, sir.</s>ZAKARIA: We would love to have you back. Thank you, sir.</s>NAVARRO: Any time.</s>ZAKARIA: Now, if you are wondering what the world will look like post- lockdown, so are we. And next week, we will bring you a special that looks at just that. What economics, politics, cities, and life in general will look like. It is called "POST COVID-19 WORLD." And it will air next Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Next on GPS, did you know there is a Western country that essentially never locked down and its COVID rates didn't skyrocket? We will take you to Sweden when we come back.</s>ZAKARIA, GPS: And now to the very curious case of Sweden. The Nordic nation has not subscribed to most of the lockdown measures that the rest of the western world indeed much of the world has adhered to. If you're hungry, you can go to a restaurant in Sweden. Thirsty, the bars are open as well. You need a hair cut? Not a problem. Just go to the next barbershop or salon. As for kids, the young ones at least are still in school. The result, the death rate in Sweden is higher than in neighboring countries but not as high as Spain and Italy for instance. Parts of the scientific community in Sweden have been up in arms, but the man who came up with this approach is a scientist as well. That man is Anders Tegnell, he is Sweden's Chief Epidemiologist and he joins me now. Dr. Tegnell, pleasure to have you on. Let me ask to begin - thank you. Let me ask you to begin by explaining very simply why did you decide, contravention of almost every other major country that you did not need to do a lockdown in Sweden?</s>DR. ANDERS TEGNELL, SWEDISH STATE EPIDEMIOLOGIST: I think because we really from very early on thought we would achieve the same kind of effect using the normal Swedish system for public health and working a lot with quarantine measures working a lot with giving a lot of responsibilities to individuals in our country.</s>ZAKARIA: And does that mean you think that you can achieve a large part of what you need to do that in other words, you can flatten the curve enough by just putting out some guidelines and you don't have to shut schools, you don't have to shut restaurants, et cetera? In other words you get enough bangs for the buck, as it were?</s>TEGNELL: Yes. I think so. I think so far six, seven weeks into the epidemic in Sweden, we have managed to do that. We have a very flat curve. Our health system is still working. It's a tough time for them, but they have never been overburdened. Actually, at any given time there has been at least 20 percent of the ICU beds have been empty. Traveling in Sweden has been kept down by at least 90 percent. A lot of people are staying home. Our yearly flu epidemic usually lasts six or eight weeks suddenly it stopped after four weeks when we instituted these measures. So I think we get a lot of effect from the things we did.</s>ZAKARIA: Can you explain the death rate? Because you have in Sweden a death rate that is a good bit higher than in your neighboring countries, though as we pointed out not compared to the worst countries in Europe but why do you think - was there - you know, did this kind of - is this an unintended or accidental occurrence or is it, you know, is it a cost you had to pay?</s>TEGNELL: It's certainly an unintended occurrence. It's not something we counted on. Not something we wanted. There are two different reasons for this. One is that actually our incidence in Sweden has been much higher than in neighboring countries. We're quite sure about that. Our testing capacity has been limited. And I think the number of people in Sweden that has been infected so far has been quite a lot greater than our neighboring countries. That's one part of the answer. The other part is an unfortunate number of introductions of the disease into our elderly in Sweden that caused a very high level of mortality in those places. And that's been very unfortunate. But a large part of our mortality has taken place in those institutions.</s>ZAKARIA: So, do you think that that means we should be approaching this disease slightly differently, particularly as we move into opening up in the rest of the world, which is there should be greater emphases in terms of guidelines and quarantine measures for older people? Because in much of the western world, at least, 80 percent to 90 percent of the hospitalizations seem to be for people who are over 60 or 65 so rather than quarantining everybody, in a sense, is there a way to be a little bit more form in the quarantine measures for those people who are really at risk?</s>TEGNELL: Yes, I think so. We are all learning as we go with this disease, it keeps on surprising us in different ways. But I also think you really need to adapt measures to your - to the way your country works. I think that's what we have done in Sweden. We used to use we normally use in public health and I think that's the reason why it works so reasonably well so far.</s>ZAKARIA: What is your reaction to the American strategy of handling the Coronavirus?</s>TEGNELL: I think from my point of view, I don't know the details, you had an unfortunate start. I think that's - you can tell countries who had an unfortunate start like Italy and a few others. Then you're quickly getting into major problems. When you have an able to sort of keep it reasonably low for some time, they can adapt and get your hospital system to scale up, get your testing system to scale up.</s>TEGNELL: And so it's a lot easier to handle it even also then you will have high mortality and a lot of cases and a strain on your health system. But if you miss it in the very beginning then this disease can really cause havoc.</s>ZAKARIA: Do you think that having a highly decentralized health care system like the way the United States does makes it harder? I notice when looking at your system, you're able to make very quick and efficient decisions from the center.</s>TEGNELL: Yes. But that's only a part of it. Even in Sweden being small we also have a highly decentralized system, but the resource of possibility and there's a lot experience on working together when we have to. So even if it's highly decentralized, all the decisions are taken up in the regions. There are 20 regions in Sweden. Still, when we have this kind of crisis, we all come together and work together. So it looks like we're having a lot of critical decisions taken at national level, but actually all of them need to be repeated at the local level.</s>ZAKARIA: Would it be fair to say that your basic strategy was to try to find some way to deal with the Coronavirus that - where you allowed the maximum amount of economic activity while still getting the curve down so that it was sort of sustainable?</s>TEGNELL: Economic activity never played into our decisions. It has, of course, played into the government's decision. It is the government in the end that takes the decision. But our advice to the government has been completely focused on public health. But sustainability is the important part of it. So we all knew from the beginning that this was going to be long haul. We're going to have to live with this virus, with this disease for a long time. So we need to find solutions that we can keep on doing for a long time. We all know that we can't close schools for months. We can't close borders for months and these kinds of things. So we tried to work - start working with things that we believe are sustainable for a long time and then maybe add a few things when if it gets out of hand that we can have for a shorter time but to really start with the things that we can keep on doing.</s>ZAKARIA: Dr. Tegnell pleasure to have you on, sir.</s>TEGNELL: Thank you.</s>ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS" more on President Trump blaming and shaming China. My next guests will explain what effect Donald Trump's words have had on the Asian American Community. That story when we come back.