Sweden’s decision not to lockdown in the spring of 2020 was variously described as “deadly folly” (the Guardian), “a disaster” (Time magazine) and “the world’s cautionary tale” (the New York Times).
Yet Sweden confounded its critics. The country’s first wave receded around the same time as Britain’s, and over the succeeding months it crept down the list of countries by official Covid death rate – as others caught-up-with and then surpassed Sweden’s death toll.
The argument then became: “But Sweden did worse than its neighbours!” Critics would point out that although Sweden did okay compared to the rest of Europe, it did worse than the other Nordic countries.
This was a weak argument at the time, as I’ve noted before. But now its premise is actually false: Sweden did not do worse than the other Nordics.
As you may recall, back in November of 2021 the ONS published estimates of age-adjusted excess mortality for most of the countries in Europe. These showed that up to June of 2021, Sweden had negative excess mortality – fewer people died than usual. On the other hand, its excess mortality was less negative than that of the other Nordic countries.
The ONS has now published updated estimates of age-adjusted excess mortality, which run all the way up to July of 2022. And they show that Sweden’s excess mortality is lower than Finland’s, Denmark’s and Iceland’s; only Norway did better.
Between January 2020 and July 2022 (blue dots), Sweden’s age-standardised mortality rate was 4% lower than the five-year average. By contrast, Iceland’s was 3.9% lower, Denmark’s was 2.8% lower and Finland’s was 1.7% lower. This means that Sweden did better than three out of four other Nordics.
In the summer of 2020, Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said, “Judge me in a year”. One year later, Sweden’s excess mortality was below the European average. We can now judge him again, more than two years later: Sweden’s excess mortality is the second lowest in Europe. On top of that, Sweden saw the second smallest increase in national debt of all European countries.
Tegnell got it right, and his critics got it wrong.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Wow who knew locking up healthy ppl and tossing the dick in care homes was a bad idea!! What next relying on the wind might not create a reliable energy grid. What peeves me is the total lack of accountability for the civil service who wilfully mislead our idiot politicians.
I had a discussion with an M.P. a while ago, bringing his attention, with chapter and verse, to the complete pointlessness of an entire civil service department.
His response was that he thought they performed an indispensable service organising overseas trips for politicians.
The civil service second guesses ministers who want to cover their own backsides.
There is an unholy alliance of governing party and civil service/public sector against the interests of the British public.
This is ‘democratic’ socialist fascism and it has been going on, under both main parties, since 1990.
Umberto Eco on the features of fascism:
‘The rejection of modernism…..The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
Action for actions sake.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. Fascism exploits the instinctive fear of difference. Disagreement is a sign of diversity, disagreement is treason.
Newspeak. Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.’
A great deal of this resonates in contemporary ‘dumbed down’ Britain.
Only since 1990????!!
Anders Tegnell: Legend.
Amen
I’ll have to move Ivor over here now as he covers this very well too;
https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/the-final-proof-of-lockdown-and-mask:b
Sweden already paid back the extra debt it took on. It’s gov. debt/GDP ratio is now lower again than before Covid.
How’s that going in the UK, US or Eurozone?!
Better than this. Like the UK, Sweden had a very low mortality year in 2019. If you start from Jan 2019 Sweden did better than all their neighbours in terms of ASMR. It does not surprise me if they’ve done better economically too.
Our (UK) first wave from March-August 2020 is just about balanced out by our unusually low death rate from mid-2018 until the bug hit us. In other words the number of deaths in the first wave matches the number of frail people unexpectedly still alive. Whether these were actually the same people or not needs more detailed analysis.
If we use the weekly published ONS deaths data for England and Wales to produce mid-year annual ASMR figures (based on July-June rather than the usual January-December) we see a very clear dip in year ending mid-2019 balanced by a spike in year ending mid-2020. Year to mid-2021 and year to mid-2022 are pretty much within normal variation.
Why use a mid-year annual calculation? We get extra delays in death registrations around the Christmas and New Year holidays. The above approach evens this out.
Indeed. Much like Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Brazil, Uruguay, and the 12 US States that eschewed lockdowns did similarly or better than their neighbors as well.
If the age-standardised mortality rate is lower than the five-year average in these Nordic countries, up to July 2022, it would suggest that the Covid vaccines have not been killing as many people as some of us have thought or feared.
Only the country with exceptionally high vitamin D levels due to large amounts of salmon and mackerel in their diet did better. L look forward to the government and health service urging us to keep our vitamin D levels at 2,000 IU per day (or more). Or do they not speak to the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service?
Tegnall followed OUR Pandemic Plan. The one Handcock and Johnson ditched as soon as the BBC said “Boo.”