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Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro praised Sweden's handling of the coronavirus pandemic Monday, pushing back against liberal critics who oppose the adaptation of the "low-scale" approach in the U.S.
"One of the reasons that there is increasing skepticism about the full lockdown orders is because of the dishonesty of the media and the political agenda of some of the people pushing this thing," "The Ben Shapiro Show" host argued.
SWEDEN DEFENDS CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE
"It seems like there are people who are rooting hard against Sweden, rooting hard against places opening up [so] that they want these places to fail. You just get this underlying sense from people in the media they would love to see Georgia fall on its face, Florida ... Texas ... because they want to see Republican governors humiliated for not taking coronavirus seriously enough."
As countries around the world scrambled to contain the virus, Sweden called for its people to take personal responsibility for social distancing instead of ordering lockdowns, a move Shapiro said gave credence to conservatives who champion individual freedom.
"What they should be doing is rooting that this thing is not as deadly as we’ve been told ... ," he explained. "They should be rooting that this thing doesn’t pass as easily or that the summer kills it off ... I mean I don’t care who’s president, I'm rooting to go back to regular life, but you do get the feeling that there are some people who are a little bit too sanguine about exactly how these lockdowns are going and they are looking for an excuse in order to keep the lockdowns going so they can promulgate policies that they wanted in the first place."
While many were quick to condemn the seemingly soft approach, Sweden stood out for what Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist and top strategist in the COVID-19 fight, has called a “low-scale” response that “is much more sustainable” over a longer period.
Last week, Dr. Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization praised Sweden's health care system, credited it with making all the right moves from the beginning of the outbreak, and urged U.S. officials to look toward them as a "model" in fighting the coronavirus while allowing the public to return to work -- a sentiment shared by Shapiro.
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"We’re drawing closer and closer to the reality of the situation," Shapiro said, "which is that if nothing happens in the near future, all we can do is protect the most vulnerable people in our population and let everyone else go back to work."
Fox News' Frank Miles contributed to this report.
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