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There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Here are the results versus their similar neighbors in deaths per million people[1]: Swe

There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Here are the results versus their similar neighbors in deaths per million people[1]: Sweden 1478 Denmark 474 Finland 219 Norway 173 They're 3 to 8 times worse. They now do compare favorably to Portugal for example at 1796. When did Portugal have the huge spike in deaths that propelled it in front of Sweden? When it decided not to do lockdowns, even though the numbers were horrible, to "save Christmas". 13k people or 3/4 of the total COVID deaths in Portugal happened from that decision alone. That other places also made horrible decisions doesn't help justify Sweden's. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

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sweettea 5y ago
You're citing known COVID deaths, I think, while the epidemiologist points out in the article that a better metric is excess mortality: >Sweden had one of the lower excess mortality levels in Europe Presumably, excess mortality includes the effects of overloaded hospitals, delayed medical care, lockdown-related depression, and undiagnosed COVID, which are hard to measure any other way, and which seem logically much higher under lockdown.
- tomp 5y ago
  Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28%25%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~DNK~FIN~NOR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Looks like Sweden's (cumulative) excess mortality shot up at the beginning of the pandemic, and has since trended downwards, whereas other nordic countries have been fairly low but trending upwards. We'll see how this plays out. Could be that Sweden simply killed off larger percentage of the old and frail at the start, who are now dying in other countries. Or maybe Swedish population got infected more, and now has stronger protection than other countries.
- gpm 5y ago
  So the cumulative excess death since January 1st 2020 (in terms of percentage of expected) is Sweden: 5.21% Finland: 1.57% Denmark: -0.09% Norway: -0.85% And you think these numbers somehow argue that Sweden "no longer stands out"? Or tells a more positive story than the covid death numbers at least? Source (thanks tomp): https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28%25%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~DNK~FIN~NOR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Data as of October 17th (the latest date that Sweden has data for).
  - Y-bar 5y ago
    It is also worth noting that Sweden had negative excess mortality in 2019. Many elderly who would have normally died of the yearly flu survived. Mortality for the five years prior: [1] 2015: 90 907 2016: 90 982 2017: 91 972 2018: 92 185 2019: 88 766 And 2020: 98 124 Had 2019 been in line with the previous years the excess mortality would have been noticeably less pronounced. This does explain some (not all though) of the difference in excess mortality, especially the many elderly who died early on. [1] https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/manniskorna-i-sverige/doda-i-sverige/ https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/mannisk...
  - tirpen 5y ago
    Well yes, if you deliberately chose to compare Sweden with only those countries that have better statistics, Sweden will indeed prove to have the worst statistics. Truling shocking how that works out. Here is the same graph of excess mortality with all 27 EU states included: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28%25%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~AUT~BEL~BGR~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~IRL~ITA~LVA~LTU~LUX~MLT~NLD~POL~PRT~ROU~SVK~SVN~ESP https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Note how Sweden has the is the sixth lowest of all the countries in the graph.
    - 5y ago
vladharbuz 5y ago
I would love it if we could get such clear-cut results from the numbers, and just be able to say “this strategy is good, if we do that everything will be fine” (not saying you're saying that), but I really don't think that's the case. Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million. The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they have one of the highest vaccination rates, and have had multiple lockdowns, but are still at a very high 2119 deaths per million. I'm not trying to say this or that approach is good or bad, and I'm happy we've had lockdowns here in Switzerland. I'm just saying that correlating the number of deaths with the implementation of lockdowns definitely does not fully explain what we've seen so far. There are so many other factors, such as excess mortality, compliance with measures, psychological impacts on both mental and physical health, international travel, local variants, and a lot of factors we don't even know exist yet.
- inpdx 5y ago
  While I agree comparing countries can be apples and oranges, it makes sense to compare the Scandinavian countries. That Norway and Finland were much lower strongly suggests Sweden's strategies worsened things.
  - yxhuvud 5y ago
    Only if you assume the countries are similar in every other way that matter. But that is not the case, Sweden is for example by far the most urbanized country in Scandinavia - the share of people living in big or medium sized cities is 10% higher than other Scandinavian countries. Countries with high level of urbanisation have (so far, and especially early on) been hit way harder than more rural countries.
    - hedora 5y ago
      I’d be interested in seeing a scatter plot of excess mortality vs urbanization, income, single family housing, etc, etc. in one of these articles. Without that, they seem pretty lazy, or designed to drive a political point regardless of the evidence.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
I don't know. A lot of people are attempting to use Sweden as some sort of political blunt force instrument to drive home some point, seems to be used to argue both the horrors of lockdowns and the horrors of not locking down. In terms of saving lives, it clearly wasn't the best strategy. In terms of securing a reasonable standard of living, keeping the economy going, keeping mental health effects limited, it was reasonably measured. Bodies weren't piling up in the streets. In my wider circle of acquaintances, I know of exactly two people who got sick during the pandemic. Maybe a few more did but didn't tell anyone, but it wasn't anywhere near the apocalyptic tales you see on the Internet, especially from people who haven't even been to the country.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Bodies don't pile up on the streets in an advanced first world country. That's kinda the problem: everyone is entitled to the best medical care. A 100 years ago nobody would have even blinked at a cholera epidemic in Stockholm's slums causing deaths. In the Netherlands less than one thousand patients on the ICU is able to bring a healthcare system to a grinding halt.
- marvin 5y ago
  Are you sure on the economics part of the equation? My impression was that Sweden also had a bigger GDP per capita decline than the other Scandinavian countries. I don't have the data in front of me, though.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    It's pretty hard to draw conclusions from looking at the GDP, since the global economy is so entangled (and the Swedish economy is fairly exports-based).
bcalp 5y ago
Sweden is more comparable to Germany in population structure. Especially Norway and Finland are completely different. Have a look here (tone is satirical) for a comparison of Sweden's and Germany's graphs: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/11/12/wear-a-mask-and-get-a-vaccine-so-that-sars-cov-2-can-attack-you-when-youre-older-and-fatter/ https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/11/12/wear-a-mask-and... Germany's numbers are exploding right now. In the U.S. you could also compare New York and Vermont. New York was more like Sweden (not by choice, but through incompetence and extreme population density). Vermont had the officially recommended policies and was a poster child. Now the Vermont numbers are exploding, while New York's are not. There is something to be said for the theory that the highly connected nodes in the social graph (who are often very healthy) all need to be infected in a short period. Then the outbreaks stop (like they have always done with the flu).
- Oddskar 5y ago
  The graph is unusable considering the context of the different countries. You simply can not compare the two considering how little attention Sweden actually pays to Covid in general and how little testing facilities there actually are in comparison to Germany.
  - gaftx 5y ago
    This is true, but the fatality graphs tell the same story: Rising in Germany now, flat in Sweden. And I presume that fatalities are lagging behind the case graphs by 4-8 weeks, so it is going to get worse in Germany.
  - pfortuny 5y ago
    BUT: being positive in a test is NOT AT ALL SIMILAR to being sick. And this is very important.
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  There is this theory about pockets of herd immunity being formed after massive infection waves. These tend to be formed in a period of 2-3 months and with new infections dropping radically afterwards. Certain regions in India are now a perfect example.
rob_c 5y ago
Yes, but comparing flat numbers in a statistically uncorrected way is like saying "Why aren't there any of the population from oap nursing homes in primary schools?". Context is king, no more so than large scale and complex statistical analyses. Sadly almost nobody seems to appreciate this as long as they have a number to argue a point. Nobody corrects for population demographics. Population density. The various interventions which will pollute the study even further as some have proven damaging. Not to mention the large scale all cause mortality spike associated with the vaccine drive observed as predicted in each further country from watching the Israeli data. Ignoring all of the above in your statistical analysis is both cherry picking and employing the same logic used by people to exclaim 5G definitely causes cancer because of study-X where a rat died that one time.
- AlecSchueler 5y ago
  Maybe you could account for the above and provide a counter analysis?
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Ironically yes, I could provided enough raw data is actually published and this was part of the formal statement about reproducibility and reliability of report 9. That alone is probably one of the reasons the above data is now declared in the interests of nation states rather than being openly shared data. Only a few years ago we were making headway in data like this being made publicly available in it's entirety through equivalent to the English ONS. But this is now very inconvenient and frankly some of the data has been deemed "does not exist" so it can't be requested under FOI laws in the UK, despite the infrastructure still being in place and working in collection of this data. I'm not crying conspiracy I'm just making a statement that lack of transparency sucks the big one when it comes to public policy.
refurb 5y ago
The best part is we’re not even through the Covid situation yet people are calling out winners and losers by looking at Covid deaths only. Let’s revisit this in a decade when folks can add up deaths from Covid (and delayed care for other issues), mental health and economic impact. THAT will be interesting to see.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  I'm awaiting the Curtis documentary in 30 years.
refurb 5y ago
Maybe better to compare to Singapore which had ~6 deaths per million earlier this year, has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world but since barely relaxing their restrictions now has ~120 deaths per million, raging number of cases (mostly vaccinated) and had the highest level of suicides last year since 2012?
- bryans 5y ago
  It doesn't makes any sense to compare a country with a population density of 25/km2 to one with 8,358/km2. Also, Singapore's deaths per positive test and deaths per hospitalization are far lower even during the same outbreak period. Also, the suicide rates were already spiking by 19.15% in 2019, while the increase for 2020 was 13%, so to place the blame on lockdowns is misinformed and disingenuous, at best.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Lies, damn lies and statistics. Why calculate density of Sweden based on the total country when most people live in a couple cities? That’s just lying. It’s like calculating Canada’s density over the Arctic when 80% live within 100 miles of the US border. And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was the highest since 2012?
    - bryans 5y ago
      > Why calculate density of Sweden based on the total country when most people live in a couple cities? That’s just lying. It’s like calculating Canada’s density over the Arctic when 80% live within 100 miles of the US border. Even if you want to compare by Sweden's most dense region, it's still 282/km2 versus 8,358/km2. Your comparison makes no sense whatsoever. > And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was the highest since 2012? You weren't making some generalized point about suicides increasing (which would have been irrelevant to the conversation at hand), you were trying to imply that lockdowns were directly responsible for the increase, which the statistical trend refutes. Your commentary is intentionally disinformative.
havkd 5y ago
You must also take into account the effect on the economy, mental health, freedoms, etc.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  ...and civilization. "Defined" as that area in which "you will use contraceptives methods" and "you will not leave the house" while having the same effects are valued differently on a base of sheer logic, directly translating as "good sense". And in a further step "defined" as "if the citizens are treated as minors a dire, critical problem is revealed". With reference to the countries that went to look for hermits in the deserts to tell them they should lock themselves somewhere to comply to the policy.
Jensson 5y ago
Expected lifespan under covid was still higher in Sweden than Denmark or Finland. So to me it seems like other healthcare or national policies matters much more than the covid response, overall covid had a very minor effect on healthspan compared to laws regulating alcohol or tobacco or similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... I don't really see why people talk so much about covid when you can get way more health benefits just by limiting the hours you can buy alcohol on or similar, compared to limiting the movement of an entire population. And next year as people got vaccinated the one year covid caused drop of 0.5 years will disappear and Sweden will be even better, while the huge push for covid measures didn't have any lasting impact. Imagine how many lives could be saved if the same amount of political will and resources were spent on more important things...
- cinntaile 5y ago
  How would limiting the hours you can buy >3.5% alcohol have a big impact on lifespan. What data exists that supports your thesis? All the alcoholics seem to either buy <=3.5% or hang around in pubs all day?
  - Jensson 5y ago
    It matters for among other things drinking and driving. You would save way more lives in the long run if you fixed this than had a few covid lockdowns. There are also positive health effects to moving stronger alcohol away from grocery stores, do both and it becomes a no brainer positive effect. And no whining about "freedom", if you think that locking down people is fine in order to save lives then you can manage to buy alcohol at daytime at special stores. > One older overview of systematic reviews found that reducing hours of sale resulted in averting 250 to 750 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) per one million population (8) > One older systematic review and a recent rapid synthesis found an association between hours of sale of alcohol and increases in alcohol-related harms, including drinking and driving and road accidents, but the association was less clear for the effects on alcohol consumption or health harms > Two older reviews found significant increases in alcohol-related motor casualties and assaults with increased temporal availability https://www.mcmasterforum.org/docs/default-source/product-documents/rapid-responses/examining-the-effectiveness-and-or-cost-effectiveness-of-policies-for-reducing-alcohol-consumption.pdf https://www.mcmasterforum.org/docs/default-source/product-do...
tomohawk 5y ago
i wasn't aware that covid risk factors were aligned along nordic boundaries. This constant comparing along outward characteristics is problematic.
knuthsat 5y ago
I'm just completely astonished by the level of incompetence. I really can't imagine how human powered moon landing occurred and if it can occur under current leadership again. I don't really understand what happened in the last year? We got the vaccines at the beginning but why no new vaccines? Why no lifelong protection vaccines? Where are all of the incentives to accelerate the r&d of new ways to handle this? I mean, the current wave is worse than the worst and the strategies are still pure incompetence. Is everyone just faking competence currently?
- deleted 5y ago
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- dt3ft 5y ago
  Competent people are not working for the government. They choose private sector where they can earn a lot more. Start paying handsomely and maybe competent people will become interested. On top of earnings, there is also the issue of unreasonable demand. Did you know for example that some government agencies can not use productive software because of stupid policies imposed by incompetent regulating bodies?
  - vaxmyass 5y ago
    You are right. Only criminals work for the government.
mattmanser 5y ago
Which again is cherry picking as you're not comparing them to the country over, or two steps away. Many of which had exactly the same death rate per 100,000 and did lock down. And the countries you're comparing them to are much smaller population wise. And worse still, a lot of the cases in Sweden earlier doors were brought back by holidayers in Spain, a popular Swedish holiday location apparently, which is exactly what happened to the UK too. Is it a popular Finnish holiday location? Norwegian? Do those countries even have flights to Spain? Answers I dont know, do you? There's two sides to every story. Instead you might ask why don't they have a higher death rate than the UK or France or Italy, all of whom locked down.
- mongol 5y ago
  Of course Norway and Finland have flights to Spain!
pfortuny 5y ago
Spain (where the Constitutional Court has deemed the strict lockdown unconstitutional): 1830… Just another data point.
Proven 5y ago
> They're 3 to 8 times worse. LOL!!! What a clueless comment. > There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Who are you trying to redeem? Sleepy Joe? Why didn't you compare the number of people inconvenienced, or economics losses, or jobs lost?
rkk3 5y ago
Here are the results comparing NY Deaths per Million to a "similar" neighbor in the North East [1] New York 2920 Vermont 620 They are 5 times worse! New York's decision to have a more urban population is completely unjustifiable. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...
- randomopining 5y ago
  Densest city in the US. Thus Massive spread at beginning of pandemic. Durr.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Given the same data I'm fairly sure this proves millionaires are responsible for so many dying.
mrfusion 5y ago
You can’t look at deaths in a vacuum though. How many survivors in other countries were locked up in nursing homes with seeing their families? How many businesses closed permanently? How many suicides and drug deaths? How many students fell behind? I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns.
- MadeThisToReply 5y ago
  > I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns. 18 months of relentless one-sided fear porn will do that to a mind. I highly recommend Laura Dodsworth's recent book A State of Fear for more on this. It's about the UK but I'm sure a similar story could be told about most Western countries.
belorn 5y ago
If we compare Sweden with Denmark it indeed looks bad with 3 times higher rate in Sweden. If we however compare region vs region, the numbers look different. Skåne, being the region next to Denmark with only a bridge separating the two, had similar deaths per million people as Denmark. If we look even closer, Malmö as the city on one side had lower rates than Copenhagen on the other side. We need to answer three major question. 1: Malmö has the same lock down rules as the rest of Sweden, so why are the numbers so low compared to Copenhagen. 2: Why does Stockholm and the surrounding area have so high rate that it brings up the national average to be 3 times higher then Denmark? Finally 3: How does the lock downs relate to those two questions. Finland made a smart move in the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down the capital with restricted movement in and out, keeping the initial spread low. As I see it, Sweden made three mistakes. They should have locked down Stockholm. They should also have closed down the only subway Sweden has, located in Stockholm. They should have isolated the elder care workers who lived in Stockholm, many who used the subway system to reach the elder care homes going from elder care homes to elder care homes. Last they should have injected funds and medical supplies to the privatized elder care system, as many workers didn't even get enough time to wash their hands between patients.
vixen99 5y ago
Yes but for whatever reason, death rates in Sweden before any measures were introduced by any Nordic country were already much higher than in the other Nordic countries. So it's not a fair comparison of measures versus measures. Any conclusion on that basis is invalid. Sweden's excess mortality in 2020 was one of the lowest in Europe. An overall comparison with Scotland as a country which took drastic measures shows that it fared very badly with much greater excess death together with the many long-lasting knock-on effects of lockdown. Death rates as of Nov 2021 as % of the population are 0.216 (Scotland) versus 0.147 (Sweden).
bni 5y ago
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway are not similar in any way that matters for a pandemic.

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sweettea 5y ago

You're citing known COVID deaths, I think, while the epidemiologist points out in the article that a better metric is excess mortality: >Sweden had one of the lower excess mortality levels in Europe Presumably, excess mortality includes the effects of overloaded hospitals, delayed medical care, lockdown-related depression, and undiagnosed COVID, which are hard to measure any other way, and which seem logically much higher under lockdown.

tomp 5y ago
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28%25%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~DNK~FIN~NOR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Looks like Sweden's (cumulative) excess mortality shot up at the beginning of the pandemic, and has since trended downwards, whereas other nordic countries have been fairly low but trending upwards. We'll see how this plays out. Could be that Sweden simply killed off larger percentage of the old and frail at the start, who are now dying in other countries. Or maybe Swedish population got infected more, and now has stronger protection than other countries.
gpm 5y ago
So the cumulative excess death since January 1st 2020 (in terms of percentage of expected) is Sweden: 5.21% Finland: 1.57% Denmark: -0.09% Norway: -0.85% And you think these numbers somehow argue that Sweden "no longer stands out"? Or tells a more positive story than the covid death numbers at least? Source (thanks tomp): https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28%25%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~DNK~FIN~NOR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Data as of October 17th (the latest date that Sweden has data for).
- Y-bar 5y ago
  It is also worth noting that Sweden had negative excess mortality in 2019. Many elderly who would have normally died of the yearly flu survived. Mortality for the five years prior: [1] 2015: 90 907 2016: 90 982 2017: 91 972 2018: 92 185 2019: 88 766 And 2020: 98 124 Had 2019 been in line with the previous years the excess mortality would have been noticeably less pronounced. This does explain some (not all though) of the difference in excess mortality, especially the many elderly who died early on. [1] https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/manniskorna-i-sverige/doda-i-sverige/ https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/mannisk...
- tirpen 5y ago
  Well yes, if you deliberately chose to compare Sweden with only those countries that have better statistics, Sweden will indeed prove to have the worst statistics. Truling shocking how that works out. Here is the same graph of excess mortality with all 27 EU states included: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Excess+mortality+%28%25%29&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~AUT~BEL~BGR~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~IRL~ITA~LVA~LTU~LUX~MLT~NLD~POL~PRT~ROU~SVK~SVN~ESP https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Note how Sweden has the is the sixth lowest of all the countries in the graph.
  - 5y ago

vladharbuz 5y ago

I would love it if we could get such clear-cut results from the numbers, and just be able to say “this strategy is good, if we do that everything will be fine” (not saying you're saying that), but I really don't think that's the case. Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million. The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they have one of the highest vaccination rates, and have had multiple lockdowns, but are still at a very high 2119 deaths per million. I'm not trying to say this or that approach is good or bad, and I'm happy we've had lockdowns here in Switzerland. I'm just saying that correlating the number of deaths with the implementation of lockdowns definitely does not fully explain what we've seen so far. There are so many other factors, such as excess mortality, compliance with measures, psychological impacts on both mental and physical health, international travel, local variants, and a lot of factors we don't even know exist yet.

inpdx 5y ago
While I agree comparing countries can be apples and oranges, it makes sense to compare the Scandinavian countries. That Norway and Finland were much lower strongly suggests Sweden's strategies worsened things.
- yxhuvud 5y ago
  Only if you assume the countries are similar in every other way that matter. But that is not the case, Sweden is for example by far the most urbanized country in Scandinavia - the share of people living in big or medium sized cities is 10% higher than other Scandinavian countries. Countries with high level of urbanisation have (so far, and especially early on) been hit way harder than more rural countries.
  - hedora 5y ago
    I’d be interested in seeing a scatter plot of excess mortality vs urbanization, income, single family housing, etc, etc. in one of these articles. Without that, they seem pretty lazy, or designed to drive a political point regardless of the evidence.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

I don't know. A lot of people are attempting to use Sweden as some sort of political blunt force instrument to drive home some point, seems to be used to argue both the horrors of lockdowns and the horrors of not locking down. In terms of saving lives, it clearly wasn't the best strategy. In terms of securing a reasonable standard of living, keeping the economy going, keeping mental health effects limited, it was reasonably measured. Bodies weren't piling up in the streets. In my wider circle of acquaintances, I know of exactly two people who got sick during the pandemic. Maybe a few more did but didn't tell anyone, but it wasn't anywhere near the apocalyptic tales you see on the Internet, especially from people who haven't even been to the country.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Bodies don't pile up on the streets in an advanced first world country. That's kinda the problem: everyone is entitled to the best medical care. A 100 years ago nobody would have even blinked at a cholera epidemic in Stockholm's slums causing deaths. In the Netherlands less than one thousand patients on the ICU is able to bring a healthcare system to a grinding halt.
marvin 5y ago
Are you sure on the economics part of the equation? My impression was that Sweden also had a bigger GDP per capita decline than the other Scandinavian countries. I don't have the data in front of me, though.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  It's pretty hard to draw conclusions from looking at the GDP, since the global economy is so entangled (and the Swedish economy is fairly exports-based).

bcalp 5y ago

Sweden is more comparable to Germany in population structure. Especially Norway and Finland are completely different. Have a look here (tone is satirical) for a comparison of Sweden's and Germany's graphs: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/11/12/wear-a-mask-and-get-a-vaccine-so-that-sars-cov-2-can-attack-you-when-youre-older-and-fatter/ https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/11/12/wear-a-mask-and... Germany's numbers are exploding right now. In the U.S. you could also compare New York and Vermont. New York was more like Sweden (not by choice, but through incompetence and extreme population density). Vermont had the officially recommended policies and was a poster child. Now the Vermont numbers are exploding, while New York's are not. There is something to be said for the theory that the highly connected nodes in the social graph (who are often very healthy) all need to be infected in a short period. Then the outbreaks stop (like they have always done with the flu).

Oddskar 5y ago
The graph is unusable considering the context of the different countries. You simply can not compare the two considering how little attention Sweden actually pays to Covid in general and how little testing facilities there actually are in comparison to Germany.
- gaftx 5y ago
  This is true, but the fatality graphs tell the same story: Rising in Germany now, flat in Sweden. And I presume that fatalities are lagging behind the case graphs by 4-8 weeks, so it is going to get worse in Germany.
- pfortuny 5y ago
  BUT: being positive in a test is NOT AT ALL SIMILAR to being sick. And this is very important.
bigodbiel 5y ago
There is this theory about pockets of herd immunity being formed after massive infection waves. These tend to be formed in a period of 2-3 months and with new infections dropping radically afterwards. Certain regions in India are now a perfect example.

rob_c 5y ago

Yes, but comparing flat numbers in a statistically uncorrected way is like saying "Why aren't there any of the population from oap nursing homes in primary schools?". Context is king, no more so than large scale and complex statistical analyses. Sadly almost nobody seems to appreciate this as long as they have a number to argue a point. Nobody corrects for population demographics. Population density. The various interventions which will pollute the study even further as some have proven damaging. Not to mention the large scale all cause mortality spike associated with the vaccine drive observed as predicted in each further country from watching the Israeli data. Ignoring all of the above in your statistical analysis is both cherry picking and employing the same logic used by people to exclaim 5G definitely causes cancer because of study-X where a rat died that one time.

AlecSchueler 5y ago
Maybe you could account for the above and provide a counter analysis?
- rob_c 5y ago
  Ironically yes, I could provided enough raw data is actually published and this was part of the formal statement about reproducibility and reliability of report 9. That alone is probably one of the reasons the above data is now declared in the interests of nation states rather than being openly shared data. Only a few years ago we were making headway in data like this being made publicly available in it's entirety through equivalent to the English ONS. But this is now very inconvenient and frankly some of the data has been deemed "does not exist" so it can't be requested under FOI laws in the UK, despite the infrastructure still being in place and working in collection of this data. I'm not crying conspiracy I'm just making a statement that lack of transparency sucks the big one when it comes to public policy.

refurb 5y ago

The best part is we’re not even through the Covid situation yet people are calling out winners and losers by looking at Covid deaths only. Let’s revisit this in a decade when folks can add up deaths from Covid (and delayed care for other issues), mental health and economic impact. THAT will be interesting to see.

thinkingemote 5y ago
I'm awaiting the Curtis documentary in 30 years.

refurb 5y ago

Maybe better to compare to Singapore which had ~6 deaths per million earlier this year, has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world but since barely relaxing their restrictions now has ~120 deaths per million, raging number of cases (mostly vaccinated) and had the highest level of suicides last year since 2012?

bryans 5y ago
It doesn't makes any sense to compare a country with a population density of 25/km2 to one with 8,358/km2. Also, Singapore's deaths per positive test and deaths per hospitalization are far lower even during the same outbreak period. Also, the suicide rates were already spiking by 19.15% in 2019, while the increase for 2020 was 13%, so to place the blame on lockdowns is misinformed and disingenuous, at best.
- refurb 5y ago
  Lies, damn lies and statistics. Why calculate density of Sweden based on the total country when most people live in a couple cities? That’s just lying. It’s like calculating Canada’s density over the Arctic when 80% live within 100 miles of the US border. And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was the highest since 2012?
  - bryans 5y ago
    > Why calculate density of Sweden based on the total country when most people live in a couple cities? That’s just lying. It’s like calculating Canada’s density over the Arctic when 80% live within 100 miles of the US border. Even if you want to compare by Sweden's most dense region, it's still 282/km2 versus 8,358/km2. Your comparison makes no sense whatsoever. > And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was the highest since 2012? You weren't making some generalized point about suicides increasing (which would have been irrelevant to the conversation at hand), you were trying to imply that lockdowns were directly responsible for the increase, which the statistical trend refutes. Your commentary is intentionally disinformative.

havkd 5y ago

You must also take into account the effect on the economy, mental health, freedoms, etc.

mdp2021 5y ago
...and civilization. "Defined" as that area in which "you will use contraceptives methods" and "you will not leave the house" while having the same effects are valued differently on a base of sheer logic, directly translating as "good sense". And in a further step "defined" as "if the citizens are treated as minors a dire, critical problem is revealed". With reference to the countries that went to look for hermits in the deserts to tell them they should lock themselves somewhere to comply to the policy.

Jensson 5y ago

Expected lifespan under covid was still higher in Sweden than Denmark or Finland. So to me it seems like other healthcare or national policies matters much more than the covid response, overall covid had a very minor effect on healthspan compared to laws regulating alcohol or tobacco or similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... I don't really see why people talk so much about covid when you can get way more health benefits just by limiting the hours you can buy alcohol on or similar, compared to limiting the movement of an entire population. And next year as people got vaccinated the one year covid caused drop of 0.5 years will disappear and Sweden will be even better, while the huge push for covid measures didn't have any lasting impact. Imagine how many lives could be saved if the same amount of political will and resources were spent on more important things...

cinntaile 5y ago
How would limiting the hours you can buy >3.5% alcohol have a big impact on lifespan. What data exists that supports your thesis? All the alcoholics seem to either buy <=3.5% or hang around in pubs all day?
- Jensson 5y ago
  It matters for among other things drinking and driving. You would save way more lives in the long run if you fixed this than had a few covid lockdowns. There are also positive health effects to moving stronger alcohol away from grocery stores, do both and it becomes a no brainer positive effect. And no whining about "freedom", if you think that locking down people is fine in order to save lives then you can manage to buy alcohol at daytime at special stores. > One older overview of systematic reviews found that reducing hours of sale resulted in averting 250 to 750 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) per one million population (8) > One older systematic review and a recent rapid synthesis found an association between hours of sale of alcohol and increases in alcohol-related harms, including drinking and driving and road accidents, but the association was less clear for the effects on alcohol consumption or health harms > Two older reviews found significant increases in alcohol-related motor casualties and assaults with increased temporal availability https://www.mcmasterforum.org/docs/default-source/product-documents/rapid-responses/examining-the-effectiveness-and-or-cost-effectiveness-of-policies-for-reducing-alcohol-consumption.pdf https://www.mcmasterforum.org/docs/default-source/product-do...

tomohawk 5y ago

i wasn't aware that covid risk factors were aligned along nordic boundaries. This constant comparing along outward characteristics is problematic.

knuthsat 5y ago

I'm just completely astonished by the level of incompetence. I really can't imagine how human powered moon landing occurred and if it can occur under current leadership again. I don't really understand what happened in the last year? We got the vaccines at the beginning but why no new vaccines? Why no lifelong protection vaccines? Where are all of the incentives to accelerate the r&d of new ways to handle this? I mean, the current wave is worse than the worst and the strategies are still pure incompetence. Is everyone just faking competence currently?

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dt3ft 5y ago
Competent people are not working for the government. They choose private sector where they can earn a lot more. Start paying handsomely and maybe competent people will become interested. On top of earnings, there is also the issue of unreasonable demand. Did you know for example that some government agencies can not use productive software because of stupid policies imposed by incompetent regulating bodies?
- vaxmyass 5y ago
  You are right. Only criminals work for the government.

mattmanser 5y ago

Which again is cherry picking as you're not comparing them to the country over, or two steps away. Many of which had exactly the same death rate per 100,000 and did lock down. And the countries you're comparing them to are much smaller population wise. And worse still, a lot of the cases in Sweden earlier doors were brought back by holidayers in Spain, a popular Swedish holiday location apparently, which is exactly what happened to the UK too. Is it a popular Finnish holiday location? Norwegian? Do those countries even have flights to Spain? Answers I dont know, do you? There's two sides to every story. Instead you might ask why don't they have a higher death rate than the UK or France or Italy, all of whom locked down.

mongol 5y ago
Of course Norway and Finland have flights to Spain!

pfortuny 5y ago

Spain (where the Constitutional Court has deemed the strict lockdown unconstitutional): 1830… Just another data point.

Proven 5y ago

> They're 3 to 8 times worse. LOL!!! What a clueless comment. > There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Who are you trying to redeem? Sleepy Joe? Why didn't you compare the number of people inconvenienced, or economics losses, or jobs lost?

rkk3 5y ago

Here are the results comparing NY Deaths per Million to a "similar" neighbor in the North East [1] New York 2920 Vermont 620 They are 5 times worse! New York's decision to have a more urban population is completely unjustifiable. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

randomopining 5y ago
Densest city in the US. Thus Massive spread at beginning of pandemic. Durr.
rob_c 5y ago
Given the same data I'm fairly sure this proves millionaires are responsible for so many dying.

mrfusion 5y ago

You can’t look at deaths in a vacuum though. How many survivors in other countries were locked up in nursing homes with seeing their families? How many businesses closed permanently? How many suicides and drug deaths? How many students fell behind? I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns.

MadeThisToReply 5y ago
> I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns. 18 months of relentless one-sided fear porn will do that to a mind. I highly recommend Laura Dodsworth's recent book A State of Fear for more on this. It's about the UK but I'm sure a similar story could be told about most Western countries.

belorn 5y ago

If we compare Sweden with Denmark it indeed looks bad with 3 times higher rate in Sweden. If we however compare region vs region, the numbers look different. Skåne, being the region next to Denmark with only a bridge separating the two, had similar deaths per million people as Denmark. If we look even closer, Malmö as the city on one side had lower rates than Copenhagen on the other side. We need to answer three major question. 1: Malmö has the same lock down rules as the rest of Sweden, so why are the numbers so low compared to Copenhagen. 2: Why does Stockholm and the surrounding area have so high rate that it brings up the national average to be 3 times higher then Denmark? Finally 3: How does the lock downs relate to those two questions. Finland made a smart move in the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down the capital with restricted movement in and out, keeping the initial spread low. As I see it, Sweden made three mistakes. They should have locked down Stockholm. They should also have closed down the only subway Sweden has, located in Stockholm. They should have isolated the elder care workers who lived in Stockholm, many who used the subway system to reach the elder care homes going from elder care homes to elder care homes. Last they should have injected funds and medical supplies to the privatized elder care system, as many workers didn't even get enough time to wash their hands between patients.

vixen99 5y ago

Yes but for whatever reason, death rates in Sweden before any measures were introduced by any Nordic country were already much higher than in the other Nordic countries. So it's not a fair comparison of measures versus measures. Any conclusion on that basis is invalid. Sweden's excess mortality in 2020 was one of the lowest in Europe. An overall comparison with Scotland as a country which took drastic measures shows that it fared very badly with much greater excess death together with the many long-lasting knock-on effects of lockdown. Death rates as of Nov 2021 as % of the population are 0.216 (Scotland) versus 0.147 (Sweden).

bni 5y ago

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway are not similar in any way that matters for a pandemic.