"Bedeviled for over 34 years by the mysterious killing of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister who was shot in the back by an unknown assailant on a quiet Stockholm street..."

"... Sweden’s judiciary finally made its case on Wednesday. At a news conference in Stockholm, the prosecutor Krister Petersson said that there was 'reasonable evidence'that the assailant was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer at an insurance company, who killed himself in 2000, at the age of 66....It was hardly a surprise, however, as the Swedish case was widely considered solved in 2018 by a freelance journalist, Thomas Pettersson, whose reporting led to Mr. Engstrom.... There has been widespread criticism about the way the Swedish judiciary and the police have handled the case over the past decades. The mystery endured through six investigations and three commissions over the years, but Mr. Engstrom eluded suspicion though he had presented himself to the police as a witness to the killing.... At the time of the killing, investigators were focused on the suspected complicity of Kurdish militants, and Mr. Engstrom was not taken seriously, according to Mr. Pettersson.... 'He has the right timing, the right clothing; he has unique information, he lied, he had close access to guns of the right type,' Mr. Pettersson said. 'He was right-wing and Palme unfriendly,” he added. “He had a deep political interest and a deep anti-Palme sentiment.'"

The NYT reports.

"'The virus is a wake-up call,' one of my doctor friends says, standing in a white bikini on a dock by the Oslo fjord."

"It is an early spring morning and we have just been for a dip in the sea, which is 4º C (about 40º F). Now we let wind and a bleak sun dry us off. 'We have messed up nature,' she goes on. 'We have exploited it in places we shouldn’t have been.' The ice-bathing club meets more often. We need the rush, the extracted inner heat that will keep us warm for the rest of the day. We strictly observe the recommendations of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health: no more than five in a group. Only meet outdoors. Stay one meter apart. 'We are all going to get it one way or another,' says Joanna, a cancer surgeon.... 'It is only a question of time. The strategy of the government is clear: Norway wants to curb the spread so that not too many get ill at the same time.'... A friend on my street is afraid of everything. Trampolines. Carbs. Falling stocks. Bank collapse. Losing control. But nothing scares him more than the Swedish model. Sweden is the only country in Europe to have imposed no rules of restriction. The schools are open, bars serve whatever you like, even fitness centers are functioning. With a population twice as big as Norway’s, the country’s death toll by end of April was more than ten times higher. Sweden has knowingly let a large part of the population get infected in order to achieve herd immunity before a vaccine is ready. 'What do you prefer? A country run by a government that listens to medical advice and takes the responsibility?' my anxious neighbor asks. 'Or the Swedish system of experts battling one another on thin ice?... What is solidarity?... It is for us who are privileged to observe the rules. What’s so bad about lounging on the sofa for a few weeks, anyway? Can’t we just be a bit careful? When did that ever hurt?'"

From "A Virus in the Neighborhood" by Åsne Seierstad (New York Review of Books).

"There are only different hellish ways to adapt to a pandemic and save both lives and livelihoods. I raise Sweden..."

"... not because I think it has found the magic balance — it is way too soon to tell — but because I think we should be debating all the different ways and costs of acquiring immunity. When I look across America, though, and see governors partly lifting lockdowns — because they feel their people just can’t take it anymore for economic or psychological reasons, even though their populations have little or no immunity — I worry we may end up developing more herd immunity but in a painful, deadly, costly, uncoordinated way that still leaves room for the coronavirus to strike hard again and overwhelm hospitals.... Herd immunity 'has historically been nature’s way of ending pandemics,' added Dr. David Katz, the public health physician.... 'We need to bend with her forces...' That means a designed strategy, based on risk profiles, of phasing back to work those least vulnerable, so we gradually cultivate the protection of herd immunity — 'while concentrating our health services and social services on protecting those most vulnerable' until we can sound the all-clear."

From "Is Sweden Doing It Right?/The Swedes aren’t battling the coronavirus with broad lockdowns" by Thomas Friedman (in the NYT).