We all remember what happened last year when Sweden’s unflappable state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell announced there wouldn’t be a lockdown. His “trust-based” approach was roundly denounced – not only in the media, but also by some ‘experts’.
As Johan Anderberg notes, Sweden’s pandemic strategy was variously described as “deadly folly” (Guardian), “a disaster” (Time magazine) and “the world’s cautionary tale” (New York Times).
Since the end of the first wave, however, Sweden has been gradually creeping down the list of countries by official Covid death rate. As of 16th October, it was ranked 52nd – well below the European average.
Yet this actually understates how well Sweden has done. As I and others have consistently argued, number of Covid deaths per million is not the best measure of the pandemic’s impact on mortality. Far better is age-adjusted excess mortality.
Thanks to an ONS report published on Thursday, we now have age-adjusted excess mortality numbers for most of the countries in Europe, covering the entire period from January 2020 to June 2021.
As an aside, the report clearly states: “The best way of comparing the mortality impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic internationally is by looking at all-cause mortality compared with the five-year average.”
So what do the new numbers show? Sweden has had negative excess mortality. In other words, the level of mortality between January 2020 and June 2021 was lower than the five-year average. If this isn’t a vindication of Anders Tegnell’s approach, I don’t know what is.
The table below (taken from the ONS report) shows age-adjusted excess mortality from 3rd January 2020 to 18th June 2021. As you can see, Sweden is 8th from bottom, with a value of –2.3%.
Interestingly, the bottom six are all small, geographically peripheral countries (three islands, plus Denmark, Norway and Finland). This suggests that geography and border controls were key, and that lockdowns – in the absence of effective border controls – didn’t make much difference.
The top seven are all in Eastern Europe, which again suggests that some geographic factor is at work. What may account for high excess mortality in these countries is the fact that all of them missed the first wave, and hence had even bigger epidemics in the winter. Official Covid death rates are shown below:
If true, this would constitute strong evidence against the House of Commons’ report, which concluded that Britain should have tried to suppress the first wave. As I’ve noted before, this approach always carried the risk of creating an even bigger epidemic in the winter.
In any event, Anders Tegnell can give himself a well-deserved pat on the back. His country kept civil liberties largely intact, and ended up with one of Europe’s lowest death tolls. Well done, professor.
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Lock Sweden down. Do it now
@moderator do we really need a troll in here?
And yet Sweden is now mandating vaxx passes
Why ever would they do that if public health was what motivated them?
I think it shows more than anywhere else, that vaccine passports are the agenda and the governments are either not in charge any more or are taking massive amounts of money as bribes, which I believe is called ‘corruption’.
Governments are being bribed, threatened, blackmailed and cajoled into betraying their fellow citizens. They are guilty of murder treason and other crimes against humanity There is only one suitable punishment for these people.
I firmly believe that they are being bribed, possibly coerced. That bit of fluff who was Johnson’s ex seems to know what’s going on, and the BoE are involved too.
Nonsense, western governments are all part of an organized crime syndicate, they never had any integrity or honesty to begin with. I agree with the sentence, though.
Can you corrupt organised crime?
Vaccine passports are the gateway to Social Credit Score apps. That is the end game and always has been. Covid is just air cover. Like all Western Democracies (or what used to be Democracies) Sweden has its orders from the Global Capitalists and WEF mob and it dare not disobey them. The question is how long England will hold out? My guess is a few weeks at best, but I hope that I am wrong!
All members of the Swedish Parliament should have their bank account statements examined, and their homes searched for brown envelopes stuffed with cash and diamonds.
And interesting point from that table is that England has the second highest excess mortality for people aged under 65 in Europe – behind only Bulgaria.
Yes, Sweden has been an excellent example of how to deal with a pandemic. However, not much follows from it for the situation in other countries:
Success???
What success?
Lower than average excess mortality, or the introduction of digital IDs?
By 2025, every European nation will be in the same boat…the RMS Titanic.
It’ll have to be before then – next uk general election is May 2024 and next us election is November 2024. I think the plan may be about 2yrs behind due to brexit and trump. I don’t think we were supposed to vote for these….
People didn’t want to understand what “age-adjusted excess mortality” meant. They were too busy enjoying their pay rise to stay home.
“Age adjusted” mortality is also important. Almost all of Sweden’s “COVID” deaths occurred in people over the age of 75. I believe the majority of deaths happened in people over the age of 80.
Mortality “from COVID” under the age of 40 was (and still is) almost non-existent.
The living standards in Romania have taken a nose dive in the past couple of years. In Bucharest there are a lot of issues with heating and hot water (because cities in Romania rely on hot water distribution networks). The wages are going down and the cost of food and of basic amenities is going up. The government has sold A LOT of the country’s food production for peanuts over to other European countries, leaving no food for the population. The high excess mortality in Romania isn’t just because of covid. It’s because Romanian people eat less and worse food than before, live in colder homes than before, and have less money to spend on basic needs. The so-called leaders of Romania are selling the country bit by bit from under its people.
That sounds like a recipe for disaster!
400 – 1,000 tourists to the UK arriving on dinghies, assisted by Patel’s Taxi Service (aka Border Farce) could also be seen as a disaster. Just where are they all going? Surely all the hotels must be full by now?
Rishi has just had an extension to his house – room there for a few, perhaps?
One of many possibilities is that the Soros army of fit fighting age tourists will soon be wearing UN uniforms to enforce political law and order.
That was a warning from Jim Stone about 5 years ago. Despite him sometimes being incoherent and shooting from the hip, over the years he is about 75% accurate with his predictions.
I’ve heard this too, and it has so many times been pointed out where are the women and children amongst those coming over. Six years ago around 35,000 ‘refugees’ living in Sweden came over the border into Finland – the Swedes were buying them train and bus tickets and shipping them to the border. The stories are that they believed the ‘benefits’ were better here – they soon discovered they weren’t, and some slipped back into Sweden.
What got the backs of many Finns up is that they complained about the food they were given with one on the TV News saying “This is not fit for dog. Woman, maybe, but not dog.” Finnish women did not take kindly to that. And Finns eat what they eat (much pork!), and have seen hard times and know that free food is not to be sniffed at.
I take the ‘fighting force’ with a pinch of salt, though – the Swedes have discovered they are more expert at being disinclined to work and scrounge on benefits, and dabble in crime.
For balance, I do point out that European countries have supplied the weapons with which their homes have been blown to bits, so what goes around comes around. I expect the majority to be decent folk who just wanted to carry on living in their own countries if only they had had a decent standard of living.
Anyway, that’s a whole other subject, and I’m just here for my dose of Covid – can’t seem to find it anywhere!!
Its good to have some covid respite
Soon we will find out if covid and ‘tourists’ are chapters from the same book….or rather different milestones of The Project?
The other scenario is they will be offered citizenship in return for defending the country against a far Eastern enemy. They’re not expected to survive. There’s precedent in recent history for this…
“Just where are they all going?”
NHS and care homes, to fill the employment gaps.
Same thing is happening in the US with the Mexican border.
It’s not a coincidence.
I heard that Ceausescu got Romania out of debt – then he got shot, and Germany came along and offered Romania some shiny new trains and now Romania is in debt to Germany. It was Romania’s oil fields that drove the German war machine of WW2.
So now you have new trains (or, they were 10 years ago) but they can’t go very fast because the tracks are still in the same rubbish condition.
Well, Romanians know where their leaders live…
Ceausescu did get Romania out of debt. The drop that broke the camel’s back was when he kinda said “Well… we’ve tightened the belt so far… let’s keep it up!” And the people had enough. But the revolution was not driven by the people. It was setup, as always, by people in positions of power in order to seize control of the country, and they used the people to their advantage. So even though it was a victory over communism, it was a hollow one, as the spirit of communism never died, and the ruling mafia that is running the country since then is keeping that spirit alive and well.
As for debts towards Germany… Germany owes a crap ton of money to Romania after WW2, but the debt has been completely swept under the rug. It is an absolutely ridiculous sum, but good luck finding any more records of it. These days Germany is contempt with cutting down our forests, exploiting our natural resources, and when some politician with their heart in the right place tries to lower the price of, say, natural gas (which he have huge reserves of), Germany intervenes immediately to say that the price of gas cannot be lowered under the set European limit, despite the fact that average income in Romania is many times lower than in the rest of Europe. The gas price in Romania is about half that of Germany, but the average net wage in Germany is over 4 times larger. The EU is placing a lot of pressure on Romania to have EU level expenses, but there is no consideration given to wages. And the government couldn’t care less. They fall over themselves to enact EU dictates, and when it comes to defending our country, our corrupt president said “Romania is a failed state” during his second 5 year presidential mandate. We can only hope that one day his days of trafficking children as mayor of Sibiu will be made public. But it will be too little, too late, and probably used to further the ruling class.
The situation is dire. As far as I can tell, Romania is a third world country at the edge of the “civilized” world, and it is being kept a third world country. We have the potential of being one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, but we are not allowed to do such a thing. We have a lot of farmland, way more than we need to feed the population. We have vast touristic potential, but our tourist locations are lying in ruin. We have oil, we have natural gas, we have gold, and all of it is being exploited by foreign companies while paying peanuts to the country (but rest assured that the proper pockets in government are well lined). We even have uranium reserves which are currently being stolen by Ukraine who dug tunnels under the border. We could finish our nuclear power station and build a new one which together would supply 50% of our power needs, but we can’t, because Germany insists we buy second hand wind turbines from them, even though our country does not have suitable wind patterns for them.
So… It could always be worse.
Interesting reply! My brother lives in Romania, and I visited for a week in Spring 2013 (Bucharest one night, train to Brasov, Onesti, back via Focsani/Buzau). I liked the Romanians I met, and those I have met outside Romania, and I have also thought the country has potential for tourism, at least. I have had it on my list of places to visit again.
I’ve always had the suspicion that the ‘EU’ was really Germany taking over Europe by stealth.
If you look into Hitler’s plan for Europe, you will find that he basically wanted to create the EU: A socialist union of states under Germany’s leadership, where states would vote for various issues. I am massively oversimplifying it, but the EU is basically Hitler’s vision for Europe.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Sweden had very few border controls. I had the pleasure of visiting in Autumn 2020 and, at the time, anybody with an EU passport could enter without any restrictions.
I never tire of saying it, Tegnell is a fucking hero and the characteristics he has shown – bravery, humility and intelligence – are the exact opposite of the so-called “leaders” and “experts” elsewhere. The Devil Sridhar being a good example.
“in Autumn 2020 and, at the time, anybody with an EU passport could enter without any restrictions.”
News to me – we live next door and Sweden’s border was closed from March 2020 until… not sure. I thought just recently. Certainly in July 2020 Swedes were not allowed out – as we drove past the bridges over the river beside the road from Tornio to Kilpisjärvi in July 2020, we saw they were manned.
Norwegians were capturing any that dared venture out and into Norway by night and escorting them home with a fine to boot. Norway was open July-Aug 2020 (and then the border closed again) and all vehicles (including us) were stopped at the border and only residents of Finland (and returning Norwegians) were allowed through.
Finns have been told that the ‘cases’ and deaths with/from Covid are/were something like 10 times more than in Finland.
Who knows? The Finnish Government are pretty handy with the propaganda, and seeing that the Covid testing & jabbing contracts handed out to private companies.
I’m Swedish – as a Swedish passport holder, there has been no restrictions what so ever for me entering Sweden from the UK (no tests, no vaccine passports, nothing apart from an old-fashioned traditional passport) in: July 2020, October 2020 (sister’s wedding), December 2020, July 2021, August 2021, October 2021, November 2021 – all the occasions on which I’ve travelled from the UK to Sweden. Travelling back to the UK has been another matter of course… (tests, PFLs, quarantines, amber/green lists, changing rules….).
I used to follow the border restrictions between Finland and Norway/Sweden but, as they seemed to keep changing, and we weren’t going to either country, I let those observations slide. My partner has been dead set against venturing into Sweden at all, as if anything we’d touch would see us dead of Covid within hours – but she’s a typical Finn, brainwashed by the Finnish Government.
Finns have had the same sort of thing as you – no more PCR test required before boarding a plane from the UK to Finland, free PCR tests required if not ‘fully vaxxed’ upon arrival in Finland, and that ‘hospitality’ is extended to foreigners, not just residents of Finland. In the other direction, to the UK, it is quarantine and PCR tests for the unvaxxed, the jabbed are required to pre-purchase an LFT kit only (at a rip-off price, I will add).
Have criss-crossed Sweden a fair amount. I do moan a bit about Sweden being boring (and Swedish television) – but I slag Finland and Finns off too a lot! Of course both countries have their good points too. We used to fly to the UK 4-5 times/year but Covid has made that too difficult for us now, so I am stuck here in Finland and when I see Finns wearing their bloody face masks everywhere I tend to despise them even more. The ‘vaxx pass’ for domestic use was introduced here a few weeks ago – for nightclubs, pubs, etc. but we all know it’s that ‘one foot in the door’.
You must be mistaken.
As Anna confirms, the only requirement for me to visit in September 2020 was a passport. There were plenty of Swedes flying both ways as well.
Well, we saw the blockades on the bridges, and the Norwegians seemed keen on telling us about Swedes being discovered in Norway being ordered back to Sweden. This was July 2020. It was peculiar with only Finnish and Norwegian vehicle registrations, no other nationalities – and a lot of Finns as they had nowhere else to go (they were not allowed into Sweden as tourists).
I flew from Helsinki to Heathrow December 2020 – the plane was just 25% full (usually 100%).
Five regional airports have closed in Finland since March 2020 ‘due to Covid’, including our local one (Kokkola). There are much fewer flights from Helsinki airport now, as compared to pre-March 2020.
We could have made trips into northern Norway & Sweden since then, but my partner is terrified of catching Covid (sorry – SARS-CoV2!) and is too scared to go to Sweden or Norway, and I let my border-watching for those countries slip, being more interested to see if we’d ever be able to travel the UK again. Rules for the UK haven’t changed recently, though – for the unvaxxed it’s 10 days quarantine (where?!) plus the 2 pre-purchased PCR tests. How this works out in reality, I don’t know – one chap on the reddit Sceptics site tells me it’s all bollocks, just enter false numbers on the Passenger Locator Form (for the tests) because the border guards are hardly likely to phone the test companies up to see if it’s true, and to ignore the quarantine. He might be right, and I like that British attitude – but also I don’t want to travel 550 kilometres to Helsinki airport to be denied entry and miss our plane if ‘the paperwork’ is not up to scratch.
As for the 10 days quarantine, I guess you can put Test & Trace (the Serco parasites) off the scent by having someone tell them, when they phone, that you’ve already left the country and gone back to… Russia?! How would they know?
Happy to confirm that. I made a spur of the moment decision to book a week in Stockholm late September/early October last year. All I needed was a UK passport. It was hugely therapeutic. Just sorry I can’t do it again.
And they have now become a new poster boy for the vaccine passport.
Its not what they say its about.
The arguments used for and against lockdowns are now history. Lockdowns will be used as a threat to get more vaccinated and to use passports.
There can be no other logical reason for governments to persue policies of reaching for over 100% vaccination targets in their populations. We know there are incentives in the one-sided contracts with Pfizer but in themselves they do not explain this worldwide push.
Its not about what they say its about.
Its about having total control over the plebs – digitizing us by firstly using vaccine passports and then microchipped, like a pet animal. This is the future the globalists have in mind for us. Total slavery!
Veterans lay wreaths at today’s Freedom protest:
https://youtu.be/kx8nt-q5dTU
Earlier on the veterans led the march:
https://youtu.be/WmGTSWB2Upc
It’s tempting (and very easy) to jack it in. It sure feels like we’re practically alone. But I am seeing more and more veterans joing the ‘freedom’ ranks, along with more and more ordinary citizens (overall). The same appears to be the case across large parts of Europe (if you’re on Gab you’ll know what I’m talking about).
Take heart, brothers and sisters.
The ongoing COVID-19 nonsense here in the United States exists solely and exclusively because our governments have failed to use the correct treatment. They used so-called “vaccines” when Japan has just proven, in less than ONE MONTH, that Ivermectin can wipe out the disease. IVM was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 2015. One of the 3 most important drugs in human history: Aspirin, Penicillin, and Ivermectin. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
https://polisen.se/en/the-swedish-police/the-coronavirus-and-the-swedish-police/travel-to-and-from-sweden/
These are the current regulations. Looks like you can’t travel there from the UK, unless you are a Swedish citizen, possibly. It’s a bit confusing.
33 countries listed —- IRELAND is in Europe —- why are we not listed Toby ?
This is huge (uk stats):
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adults-under-60?r=kqs8e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
It just struck me, reading this – how much of Sweden’s performance is down to World War 2? I’m referring to the difference between Covid deaths and age-adjusted mortality.
Sweden, of course, was not occupied in WW2 but Norway and Denmark were. All occupied countries suffered food shortages, forced labour, conscription etc with an obvious effect on the birth rate which would have lasted well beyond the war. Sweden presumably had far higher birth-rate in the mid-forties, hence more 75-year-olds.
Same effect would presumably apply to RoI and Switzerland, which IIRC have similar rates.
Great article. Guardian probably won’t republish it
The “experts”, politicians and the media will never accept the truth about the great panic. Too much has been invested in creating the myth of the Covid bogey person. It is now the new reality. In the old Eastern bloc they managed to distort reality for well over 40 years. How long a run will our own unaccountable elites enjoy before the Covid bubble (and gravy train) finally bursts?