Last year, Sweden was the target of derision on the Left, particularly those who were gung-ho about more pandemic restrictions. What did Sweden do that was so terrible? On the one hand, Sweden did recommend masks in certain scenarios (e.g., public transit), banned large gatherings, closed upper-secondary schools, and imposed travel bans. On the other hand, it didn't implement lockdowns, curfews, or mask mandates. This approach has been seen so lax by the pandemic control freaks that Sweden has been called a disaster, a catastrophe, a failure, an example of "how not to handle COVID", and has been accused of killing its own people.
There was a model coming out of Sweden, one that was based on the infamous Imperial College model that got the United Kingdom to go into lockdown mode, that predicted that 96,000 Swedes would die by June 2020 if Sweden would not implement lockdowns, mask mandates, or other stringent measures (Gardner et al., 2020). Much like I asked last August, I would like to see how well Sweden has fared, even in spite of its seemingly lax approach.
Let's start with number of deaths. How close was Sweden to the predicted 96,000 deaths? According to the Swedish Health Ministry (Folkhälsomyndigheten), the number of dead in Sweden as of August 6, 2021 is 14,657. It has been about a year-and-a-half since the pandemic started, and Sweden has had less than a sixth of what the doom-and-gloom crowd predicted. Additionally, 9,771 of those deaths (or 66.7%) were of those who were 80 or older. The next argument I can anticipate is "well, maybe that is so, but it would have been better with lockdowns." Is that so? I took a look at the academic literature on lockdowns in June, and the data-driven evidence is showing that lockdowns were ineffective at its goal of saving lives. Not only that, it is likely that lockdowns have actually increased excess deaths.
Speaking of excess deaths, Sweden had a much lower excess death rate than many of its counterparts that locked down, including Spain and Belgium (Reuters; Eurostat). Deaths per 100,000 play out a similar finding (Johns Hopkins), mainly that other countries that locked down (e.g., Italy, France, Spain) fared worse than Sweden. Before mentioning Norway or Finland, it is worth mentioning that the Scandinavian counterparts ranked lower than Sweden in terms of restriction stringency on Oxford's COVID-19 Stringency Index during much of the pandemic.
How has the laxer approach working out for Sweden? Whether we look at Sweden's deaths (avildna), cases (sjukdomsfall), or intensive care admissions (nya intensivvårdade), what we see from the statistics from the Folkhälsomyndigheten [below] is that the pandemic seems to be subsiding in Sweden. While Sweden is looking at a denouement, other countries are looking to impose another round of restrictions.
It is not that Sweden did nothing. What Sweden did was its best to truly follow the science, as opposed to being needlessly stringent under the guise of "following the science." In the meantime, those who want to continuously impose restrictions ignore the likes of Italy, Spain, or Peru, the latter of whom has the highest per capita death rate in spite of having locked down hard and early. While the Swedish case study is not definitive proof unto itself that excessive restrictions do not work, it adds to the growing evidence base that a less onerous and more laissez-faire approach rooted in science was the better way to handle the pandemic.
Seems a lot of those dire early predictions assumed no spontaneous change in behavior in response to the virus. But people in the US stopped going out to eat well before local governments started imposing lockdowns. The trouble is the anti-lockdown movement attracted too many prominent "just the flu" cranks who denied the benefits of any behavioral changes. The correct approach was always that common sense changes in behavior were compatible with keeping most businesses open and not cratering the economy.
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