As an extreme point for comparison, Australia's annual deaths due to respiratory disease have reduced in 2020. Yes, you read that right: the net effect of COVI

As an extreme point for comparison, Australia's annual deaths due to respiratory disease have reduced in 2020. Yes, you read that right: the net effect of COVID here has been to save people who would otherwise have died from pneumonia. So, in the limit of effective response, COVID saves net lives, and in the limit of ineffective response, it costs net lives. The simplest explanation might be that Sweden has hit the intermediate point where it does neither. What happened? On the one hand, few people died of COVID. On the other hand, there are other deadly respiratory diseases, especially influenza. They're all less contagious than COVID, so the measures taken to contain COVID had the side effect of pretty much eradicating them. (Looking at it the other way: if influenza is still circulating in your community, there is no way you're going to get COVID under control.) This might not last: the psychiatrists are saying that a lot of Australian teenagers have developed eating disorders, that in ordinary times would lead to very high suicide rates, and the recession is bound to kill lots of people in various ways. No one will know the optimum response for some years, and Sweden could still turn out to be right. The Australian response could certainly be improved. Mostly by public servants who promptly owned up and asked for help when they got out of their depth in implementing it, and made fewer and less catastrophic stuff ups for want of awkward conversations with their ministers.