Has Sweden's refusal to block the lockdown defeated the outbreak? No, its record is disastrous

For much of the pandemic, Sweden stood out for its ostensibly successful efforts to beat COVID-19 while avoiding the harsh lockdowns and social distancing rules imposed on residents of other developed countries.

Swedish residents are able to indulge in bars and restaurants, their schools are still open, and somehow their economy is booming and they are in good health. So their fans, especially the anti-blockade right.

A new study by European scientists buried all these claims in the ground. The study, published in the journal Nature, paints a devastating picture of Swedish policy and its implications.

Projected levels of "natural herd immunity" remain elusive.

— Brussels et al., Nature

"Sweden's response to the epidemic is unique and characterized by a laissez-faire approach that is morally, ethically and scientifically problematic," the researchers report. ”

The report's lead author, epidemiologist Nele Brusselaers, is associated with the prestigious Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm; her collaborators are affiliated with research institutes in Sweden, Norway and Belgium.

The details of Swedish policy described by Brussels and its co-authors are staggering. They reported that the Swedish government deliberately tried to use children to spread COVID-19 and refused to care for the elderly and people with other medical conditions.

The government's goal appears to be to produce herd immunity — a level of infection that can create a natural barrier to the spread of the pandemic without inconvenience to middle- and upper-middle-class citizens; the government has never publicly raised this goal, but internal government emails disclosed by the Swedish media show that herd immunity is a closed-door strategy.

Whether explicit or not, the effort failed. "Projected 'natural herd immunity' levels remain far away," the researchers wrote, adding that herd immunity "seems out of reach" without widespread vaccination and is "probably unlikely" in any case.

It's a rebuke to the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely criticized white paper in favor of the search for herd immunity, co-authored by Swedish-born Harvard professor Martin Kurdorf who explicitly defended his home country's policies.

The country's treatment of people with comorbidities such as old age and obesity is particularly alarming.

"Despite the availability, many older adults are given morphine instead of oxygen, which effectively ends their lives," the researchers wrote. "Potentially life-saving treatments are detained without a medical examination, without notifying the patient or their family members, or with permission."

In densely populated Stockholm, triage rules state that patients with comorbidities are not admitted to an intensive care unit on the grounds that they are "unlikely to recover," the researchers wrote, citing Swedish health strategy papers and research statistics showing that ICU admissions favor older patients.

The policies were set by a small group of isolated government officials who not only failed to consult public health experts, but also ridiculed expert opinions and went around the wagon to defend Anders Tegel against growing criticism.

At the end of the day, the Swedes have suffered a heavy blow from Tegnell's policies. According to the authoritative Johns Hopkins Pandemic Tracker, while its total mortality rate from February 2020 to this week was 1,790 per million population, it was better than the United States (2,939), the United Kingdom (2,420) and France (2,107), but worse than Germany (1,539), Canada (984) and Japan (220).

More convincingly, it has a much worse rate than its Nordic neighbors Denmark (961), Norway (428) and Finland (538), all of which have taken tougher measures to fight the epidemic.

Even today, anti-embargo advocates continue to praise Sweden's approach, despite hard, cold statistics that prove its failure.

Stephen Moore, a right-wing economic commentator who is a credible mischief on many topics, boasts about Sweden's mortality rate than other countries that have imposed stricter lockdowns: "Sweden seems to have achieved herd immunity more quickly and thoroughly than other countries," Moore wrote.

Sadly, there is none.

According to Johns Hopkins University, on Feb. 17, the day Moore's column appeared in the conservative Washington Examiner magazine, the average 7-day death rate from COVID in Sweden was 5.25 per million inhabitants.

This is better than the 6.84 in the United States and Denmark (5.65), which is 5.65, but better than France (3.97), Germany (2.23), the United Kingdom (2.23), Canada (2.03) and Norway (0.92).

Moore also declared, "What is clear today is that the Swedes saved their economy." ”

Sweden's Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), of which Sweden is a member, is less optimistic.

Sweden performed slightly better than Europe as a whole in terms of pandemic-driven economic contraction, but significantly worse than its Nordic neighbours Denmark, Norway and Finland, "despite more modest distancing measures, especially in the first COVID wave," the OECD found. The OECD concluded that COVID-19 has "hit the economy hard" hard.

The authors of the journal Nature show that Swedish authorities have denied or downplayed scientific findings about COVID that should have guided them in developing more reasonable and appropriate policies.

These include scientific findings that infected but asymptomatic or symptomatic people can spread the virus, which is airborne, that the virus is a greater threat to health than the flu, and that children have no immunity.

The authors of Nature observe that Swedish policymakers "deny or reduce the fact that children may be contagious, develop serious diseases or contribute to the spread of infection among populations". At the same time, they found that the authorities' "internal emails indicate that their purpose is to use children to spread infections in society."

As a result, the government has refused to recommend wearing masks or social distancing or sponsoring more testing — at least initially. Anti-blockade advocates often gloss over the fact that Sweden did eventually tighten its social distancing rules and recommendations, albeit only after the failure of its initial policies became apparent.

Initially, in early March, when other European countries imposed a strict lockdown, Sweden banned only 500 people from public gatherings. Within weeks, it had lowered its maximum attendance to 50. The state initially did not allow distance learning in schools, but later allowed older students and university students to do distance learning.

In June 2020, Tegnol himself admitted on Swedish radio that the country's death rate was too high. "It's clear that what we're doing in Sweden has potential for improvement," he said, though he flinched somewhat at a press conference after the radio interview aired.

In December 2020, King Carl XVI Gustav publicly opposed the government's approach, shocking the entire country: "I think we have failed," he said. "We've got a lot of people dying, and it's horrible."

He's right. If Sweden had a Mortality Rate in Norway, it would have only 4,429 people dying from COVID during the pandemic, not more than 18,500.

What may have been particularly damaging to this experience was Sweden's image as a free society. The pandemic has exposed many fault lines in its society – especially young and old, locals and immigrants.

The authors of the journal Nature underscore the irony of this result: "There is more emphasis on protecting the 'image of Sweden' than on saving and protecting lives or evidence-based approaches." ”

Sweden's lessons should be taken seriously by fans in the United States and other countries. Sweden sacrificed the elderly for the pandemic and used its schoolchildren as guinea pigs. Its government has deceived people with lies about COVID-19 and even tried to discredit its critics.

These are the hallmarks of U.S. policy in the least successful state in the fight against the pandemic ( such as Florida ) — the sacrifices of the most vulnerable, most ignored or despised by scientific authorities, lies exaggerated as truth. Do we really want the entire United States to face the same catastrophe?