> Did Sweden end up worse off with no lockdown? I'm wondering how a reading of that article could lead anyone to quote it as an example of 'no lockdowns' - its

> Did Sweden end up worse off with no lockdown? I'm wondering how a reading of that article could lead anyone to quote it as an example of 'no lockdowns' - its very explicit that in many ways the measures taken in Sweden were even more restrictive (after 2020) than its neighbors in Norway and Denmark - both of which fared better than Sweden, both in deaths-per-million and also in the effect that the pandemic had on the economy. The truth is that while the initial (and quite brief) open policies were in place, the authorities mistakenly thought that herd-immunity was close to being achieved, and that the astronomically high number of deaths (at several stages, the highest number of deaths-per-million in the world), were worth the reward of achieving it. The government even had one workshop where they discussed with relevant authorities how they would handle the negative press from other countries when Sweden could announce they were 'over' the pandemic (this was naturally before the catastrophic fall and winter of 2020). After the deadly winter, the government more firmly took the reins from the health authority, and people outside Sweden would be surprised to hear how many restrictions were actually in place: including bans on group meetings, caps on the number of people who could enter a store at the same time, high school kids studying from home, and so on. But most of all, Sweden is a country where people have lived with 'social distancing' for centuries: Stockholm has the highest number of single-person households of any capital city in the world, and that pattern is repeated all over this sparsely-poulated country. In the summers, a vast number of people leave towns and use their summer-places in the countryside - another tradition that's been going-on for the last couple of centuries. In the summer of 2020 I was in Stockholm, and would often be the only person eating in a restaurant that would normally be packed with people. All of these factors helped Sweden to keep down what would otherwise have been even more catastrophic numbers of dead. Which isn't to say that the number of people who did die - often without any medical care whatsoever in the case of many elderly people in homes that were supposed to be somehow 'protected' from the pandemic - is not a massive tragedy, that Swedes themselves hardly talk about any longer. Because it really was both a callous loss of life, and a traumatic triumph of selfishness over common welfare.