by JAZZ SHAW
In the global battle against the pandemic, few countries drew as much scrutiny and frequent criticism as Sweden during the early days. While the United States and most of Europe shut down their economies and put everyone on lockdown, the Swedes largely went about their business with no mandates for the wearing of masks or prohibitions on public gatherings. Sweden initially experienced a surge of novel coronavirus cases as compared to its neighbors. And then it felt like we stopped hearing about them quite so much. So what’s been going on?
As this report from the Associated Press indicates, what’s been going on has largely been… not much, at least in terms of the virus. Sweden only made slight modifications to its policies after the initial surge, but largely stuck with the herd immunity strategy. And now, just as much of Europe is experiencing a second surge in cases, Sweden has some of the lowest numbers in all of Europe. So did their herd immunity strategy actually work?
Now, as infection numbers surge again in much of Europe, the country of 10 million people has some of the lowest numbers of new coronavirus cases — and only 14 virus patients in intensive care.
Whether Sweden’s strategy is succeeding, however, is still very uncertain.
Its health authorities, and in particular chief epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell, keep repeating a familiar warning: It’s too early to tell, and all countries are in a different phase of the pandemic.
Among Sweden’s population of ten million, they currently have a total of 14 people in ICU beds fighting COVID. In the past two weeks, they have reported 30.3 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. By comparison, Spain is at 292.2 and France reports 172.1. That’s a rather startling difference.
Of course, Sweden did pay a price to get to this point. They’ve had 5,864 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. By contrast, the United States has a population 35 times larger than Sweden’s and we just broke the 200,000 death toll. Similar to New York, a disproportionate number of their fatalities took place in nursing homes and elder-care facilities. At the height of the outbreak, they were losing 100 people per day in such places. They finally put restrictions on visitations in nursing homes and the numbers came back down.
This should leave us to wonder if that wasn’t the ideal solution from the beginning.
September 18, 2020 – Which Sweden Do You Want to Believe In?
Actually, the Swedes didn’t simply go about their business nor has normalcy returned. Herd immunity was never the guiding principle of their COVID-19 response; it was only something discussed and hoped for. Only around 17 percent of the population of Stockholm now have protective antibodies compared with the 60-70 percent theoretically required for herd immunity to exist, and that seems to be the highest percentage anywhere in the country.
In comparison, around 24 percent of the population of New York City are thought to have COVID-19 antibodies.
As we have clearly seen, it would have been impossible for Trump to have tried such a method. Even doing all that could have possibly been done, he is STILL blamed for EVERY DEATH. Even when Biden says the he could have prevented EVERY death he is not held accountable for such a stupid statement; there is no limit to how the Democrats will not politicize this tragedy brought upon us by the CCP.
If Trump had taken this course and only 100 people died, the left would have wanted him tried for murder. Left wing irresponsibility and irrationality is responsible for any lack of options to address any emergency.
5,624.
Dead.
All over 60.
I guess it was throw the old to the wolves time.
Too bad the older Swedish population couldn’t have been allowed to protect themselves.
But, hey, only 237 of Sweden’s under 60 population died of covid.
On the basis of deaths per 100,000 Sweden is at 56.88.
In the USA that death per 100,000 is 47.93 deaths, a lot lower than Sweden’s.
I’m not sure how much can be taken from that comparison, since Sweden’s population is older than our own. Around 20 percent of Swedes are over age 65, compared with around 15 percent of the U.S. population.
@Greg: True, Greg, good point.
But the demographic cutoff done by the covid graphics starts at age 60.
The closest I can find easily to that is the CIA World Fact Book.
It bunches up ages of people a little differently.
Add up those over 55 and Sweden has 31.5% of its population over 55.
The USA has 29.4% over age 55.
Pretty close.
Herd immunity did not help the older Swedes.
Just like nursing home dumping didn’t help New York’s older Americans.
We can call it a tie, we can say Sweden did it smarter, in terms of deaths.
Thats Death From CV19,, Look at the destruction to lives, family owned businesses, gone, people who died because the medical facilities were shut down for what are Called Elective surgeries,, That term is misleading,, Its Elective because they made an appointment, njot because the surgery wasnt very important, including Life Saving,, No,, we went full retard in America,,and the number who died because of the way we responded arent included,,. and I believe theyre significant, from suicide, to dead because they couldnt get appropriate care.