Back in April 2020, Stuff reported on how Sweden had fared during that spring’s coronavirus wave despite bucking the international trend to lock down.
Professor Johan Giesecke, who first recruited Tegnell during his own time as state epidemiologist, used a rare interview last week to argue that the Swedish people would respond better to more sensible measures. He blasted the sort of lockdowns imposed in Britain and Australia and warned a second wave would be inevitable once the measures are eased.
“The Swedish Government decided early in January that the measures we should take against the pandemic should be evidence based. And when you start looking around at the measures being taken by different countries, you find very few of them have a shred of evidence-base,” he said.
Giesecke, who has served as the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Control and has been advising the Swedish Government during the pandemic, told the UnHerd website there was “almost no science” behind border closures and school closures and social distancing and said he looked forward to reviewing the course of the disease in a year’s time.
“I think that the difference between countries will be quite small in the end,” he said. “I don’t think you can stop it. It’s spreading. It will roll over Europe no matter what you do.”
Giesecke was almost correct. But, the difference between the countries in the end was not quite small. Sweden did much, much better – ten times better than Chile, in fact, notorious for having the strictest lockdowns ‘despite’ also having one of the most ‘successful’ vaccination campaigns.
As of reporting date June 19th 2022, of all the countries analysed by the OECD, Sweden has the lowest overall cumulative excess deaths tally.
The somewhat less meaningful Covid death tally (per million population) does not have the same relative magnitude since different countries use different methods for recording what is and what isn’t a Covid death, on top of the fact, of course, that it’s a Pyrrhic victory to mitigate Covid deaths at the expense of higher excess non-Covid deaths. Take a look at Canada and Israel as prime examples of this – remarkably low Covid deaths relative to the rest of the world but very much in the worst half of the dataset in terms of overall excess mortality.
So, Sweden even beat neighbour Norway in the end. And, as you can see in the charts below, Norway is still heading in the wrong direction. So too are early successes, Australia and New Zealand. Their cumulative excess death tally has less Covid in it than other countries but they are getting their Covid add-ons now.
Here are the charts, plotting cumulative excess deaths vs Covid deaths. (Find the full set here.)
And here are the charts plotting excess deaths against vaccinations. Note how excess deaths taper as vaccinations do. Just a coincidence or Bradford Hill criteria #10? (Full set here.)
My analysis of each country leads me to three main conclusions.
First, Covid exists and is deadly for some. This is evident given the very strong and consistent correlations between weekly excess deaths and weekly reported Covid deaths. I think it is also important to accept this fact given that there is very little resistance now to the assertion that Covid was manufactured in a biolab. Those responsible for making it are responsible for the millions of deaths it has caused.
Secondly, experimental attempts at mitigating the spread of the virus through various ‘social distancing’ measures, including school and business closures, imprisoning healthy people in their homes, forced wearing of masks, etc. show very little evidence of benefit. Any specious evidence from prison islands (Australia and New Zealand) is ultimately proven futile as predicted by the world’s two best epidemiologists (Giesecke and Tegnell). The harms of these interventions are also apparent in the ultimate excess death numbers. Those responsible for implementing them should be held accountable for the deaths they have caused.
Thirdly, the only thing that could have made Covid worse was to put the same people responsible for making it in charge of making the antidote. It’s a bit like putting the arsonists in charge of fire policy after they have burnt down the city. But that’s what happened with Covid. It is abundantly clear that there is no reduction in Covid deaths as a result of the mass administration of the experimental ‘vaccine’. Moreover, as we should logically expect deficits in periods after excess mortality such as occurred in the nine months prior to the medical experiment, and greater protection from herd immunity, and the natural selection of less virulent variants, it is difficult to argue against the allegation that the experiment has somehow contributed to the perpetuation of Covid rather than its demise. This is further supported by the fact that Covid and excess deaths both taper off in line with society’s final realisation that they should take no further part in the experiment.
Perhaps next time, we should all be a bit more like Sweden? You know, like our lives depended on it? Not the bit about hurried medical experimentation though, we can leave that bit out.
Just the bit about letting people decide for themselves what actions they should take when faced with life.
It might just be me but I don’t think stupid politicians, greedy pharmaceutical companies and academics whose careers depend on pharma funding are the best people for the job.
This post originally appeared on Joel Smalley’s Substack page. Subscribe here.
Update: The methodology used in this post to calculate ‘cumulative excess mortality’ takes the weekly excess percentage, divides by 52 and then plots the sum of these percentages over the specified period. The effect is to give at the end of a year an average weekly percentage excess for the year. For an analysis that uses a conventional understanding of cumulative excess mortality (using the total deaths divided by the total expected deaths up to the date) see Joel’s follow up post.
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