Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[LurkerJ]

SvennoJ said:

LurkerJ said:

Death rates

Sweden had one of Europe’s lowest Covid-19 death rates despite shunning most lockdown restrictions, data released in May by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested. It covered global excess deaths associated with Covid-19 from January 2020 to December 2021.

Stockholm chose not to implement a full national lockdown during the pandemic, instead relying on “voluntary changes to behaviour”, said The Telegraph. The decision meant the nation was “deemed almost to be a rogue state” as other countries introduced wide-ranging restrictions to stem the spread of the virus. 

But according to the WHO figures, Sweden had an excess death rate of 56 per 100,000 – well below the global average of 96. By comparison, between 2020 and 2021, the UK’s excess death rate was 109, Spain’s was 111, and Germany’s was 116.

Light-touch approach

At the beginning of the pandemic, Sweden’s public health officials argued that it would “take years” to see which approaches to combating Covid-19 would be most effective, The Telegraph reported, arguing it would be better to avoid “untested measures”. 

They also took into consideration the “collateral damage” of lockdown, such as “the missed cancer diagnoses, the cancelled hospital appointments, and the lost education”, the paper said. And the decision “appears to have been vindicated”.

Sweden relied on individual citizens’ sense of “civic duty” to protect its population, said the Daily Mail, with authorities advising the population to practise social distancing while schools, bars and restaurants remained open to the public.

The decision to keep primary schools open “paid off”, said Emma Frans, a senior research specialist at the C8 Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet, writing on The Conversation. 

“The incidence of severe acute Covid in children has been low” and a study showed that Swedish children “didn’t suffer the learning loss seen in many other countries”, she said

https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/science-health/956673/did-sweden-covid-experiment-pay-off

Hmm Sweden actually did worse than Serbia, Malta, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monaco, Ireland, isle of Man, Netherlands, Albania, Denmark, Channel Islands, Finland, Belarus, Norway, Iceland, faroe Islands for deaths per 1M population. While having lower population density than most of those.

Worldwide Sweden sits at 54th out of 223 on worldometer, or 169 countries/territories did better than Sweden.
Sweden not only has very low population density also the avg number of people per household is only 2.16. In Canada that's 2.9 per household and Canada sits at 88th despite our not all that closed border policies and people flaunting lock downs and social distancing measures.

So I don't agree it paid off. Sweden had everything going for it to remain Covid free like New Zealand did. Which, despite letting it run after vaccinations, still sits at 124th in the ranking for deaths per 1 million.

Sort on deaths per 1M.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Of course that's only officially reported Covid deaths, but probably still more accurate than guestimating excess deaths where other diseases and different circumstances are also a big factor.

They still have done better than the UK and France somehow, countries with extreme lockdown measures.

Don't get me wrong, lockdowns were necessary, they're just hardly justifiable anymore, the numbers we are all sharing with each other enforce that notion imo.