Dale Wyngarden: The cautionary tale of Sweden's top-heavy ship

Stockholm has a marvelous museum devoted exclusively to a sunken, salvaged and restored ship named VASA. Behind it lies a fascinating and cautionary tale. In the early 1600s, Sweden was battling for dominance of the Baltic region, which meant controlling the high seas. King Gustav II Adolph ordered four new gunships in 1626. The VASA was designed by an experienced shipbuilder with an 111-foot keel and a gun deck with 36 cannons.

But after the keel was laid, the king ordered it lengthened to 135 feet. Then he heard the Danes were building a ship with not one but two cannon decks, so he ordered a second deck be added, bringing the total to 64 guns. Maritime engineering was still in its infancy, depending largely on trial and error. Adding to the challenge, the original ship designer took ill and died, leaving associates to finish the task.

What the king ordered, the king got. In 1628, Stockholm harbor was crowded with dignitaries for the maiden voyage of the most majestic warship of its age, loaded with 64 cannons on two decks and outfitted to carry 145 sailors and 300 marines. Lines were cast off and a gentle breeze nudged it toward the Baltic Sea ... for all of 20 minutes and eight-tenths of a mile. An eight-knot breeze was all it took to roll this magnificent but top-heavy and unstable ship onto its side. Water poured into open gun portals, the ship began sinking, and 300 sailors and dignitaries aboard scrambled to abandon ship. Twenty didn’t make it.

The VASA sat forgotten in Stockholm harbor 100 feet down until divers discovered it in 1958, surprisingly intact. Three years later, a remarkable salvage operation brought it to the surface, and three decades later a museum opened telling the story and displaying the restored ship in all its weather-worn glory. The ship has also found its way into business lexicons. VASA syndrome is a term used to describe projects that fail due to bad communication and management mistakes.

I can’t help but think our response to the COVID pandemic will go down in history as a classic VASA syndrome. We are good about tracking virus statistics locally, statewide and nationally. What we seldom see are global scorecards showing how our great wealth and medical resources still delivered the highest number of infections and deaths of any nation on earth. By a wide margin.

There’ll be no shortage of places to point fingers, but one will clearly be that our political leadership decided to take charge of our response to a medical crisis. Kings are inept at designing warships. Presidents are inept at medical responses. Early on, doctors shared a place on the podium, but were soon sidelined as a president determined that he alone would be the face and voice of pandemic response. Then came his suggestion Clorox be investigated as a cure, as the medical team that he’d benched merely rolled their eyes.

Once politicians replaced scientists, everyone wanted a turn at the podium. Legislators were eager to weigh in, from national and state down to county commissions and city councils. Many seemed convinced they knew far better than health departments how to tame a pandemic and keep America healthy. Not to be upstaged, courts joined in, eager to bring the rule of law to matters such as vaccines and face masks. And then came the flood of ill advice from pulpits, pundits and political commentators.

The CDC has been pretty much politicized and marginalized in recent years. Their proclamations are treated as little more than suggestions. States, counties, communities and school boards are left to write their own rule book. We know vaccines help and face masks disrupt the transmission of a virus that is mostly spread by breathing in air that a carrier of the disease exhaled. Yet we dig in our heals and fight about our rights to reject both. Meanwhile, the gullible tout quack cures like worm pills for dogs and cows.

The eagerness of politicians to displace medical science in responding to a pandemic has exhausted medical care systems and cost countless lives. Sadly, it may be damage that is long lasting. When the king thought he knew best, his glorious warship sank. Our COVID response is classic VASA syndrome ... a sad story of miscommunication and mismanagement by the wrong people. Perhaps next time we’ll let the doctors lead us.

— Community Columnist Dale Wyngarden is a resident of the city of Holland. He can be reached at wyngarden@ameritech.net.