Views diverge on Sweden’s unique strategy of not closing borders and shutting down schools, workplaces, restaurants, libraries, gyms and shopping centers. The Swedish government has declared no state of emergency and no orders to shelter in place. Young Swedes are even encouraged to continue with their sports training and events.
One reason why some believe Sweden is a disaster zone while others see it as a role model is that currently available data can be interpreted many different ways.
If you want Sweden to look bad, compare it to the U.S. as a whole—120 deaths per million in Sweden vs. 94 in the U.S. according to Our World in Data’s April 16 numbers. If you want Sweden to look good, compare it to New York state, which is at a more similar stage to us in the virus’s spread—120 vs. 580.
The truth is that Sweden is somewhere in the European middle when it comes to deaths per capita, which in itself is interesting. We are outliers in terms of policy, but not in terms of outcomes.
No matter how we count, though, I assume that Sweden has had more COVID-19 deaths per capita than our Nordic neighbors. But that is an obvious result of those countries’ decisions to postpone cases and deaths by locking down whole societies for a period of time. The thing to watch is what happens when they begin to open up again and will face a new wave of COVID-19. No government can keep people locked up until we have a vaccine, and most are now loosening restrictions.
A Harvard model projects that a 60 percent suppression of the disease will result in a higher peak later on and a higher number of total deaths than a mitigation strategy like the one Sweden used, where the spread is reduced by no more than 20 or 40 percent, so that the disease can pass through the population to create herd immunity during a period when the vulnerable are protected. Other models come to other conclusions, of course, depending on what you put into them. We just don’t know yet, and only time will tell. Herd immunity might yet beat herd mentality.
The Swedes who have died from the coronavirus did not die due to lack of hospital beds or ventilators. Thanks to a rapid increase in intensive care unit capacity, 20 percent of Sweden’s ICUs are unoccupied. Stockholm has built a new field hospital, already equipped to receive hundreds of COVID-19 patients, including 30 ICU beds. So far it has not had to open. The average age of the dead has been 81, which is close to our average life expectancy.
FadedJoke