Sweden, having famously refused to follow the world in imposing lockdowns and mask mandates in 2020, had the best Covid pandemic record in Europe, a new analysis by the BBC shows.
The U.K., meanwhile, had one of the worst over the three years from March 2020 to February 2023.
The new analysis, released to coincide with Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry, focuses on all-cause mortality and adjusts for the age profile in each country to take into account underlying factors that affect death rates. It finds that over the three years to February 2023, the U.K.’s death rates “went up by more than 5%, which is more than France, Germany and Spain (all up between 3% and 4.5%), but by less than Italy’s (up more than 6%)”.
The BBC quotes Edinburgh anthropologist Professor Devi Sridhar arguing that the success of the U.K.’s vaccination campaign meant its outcomes improved in the second year of the pandemic. The accumulation of natural immunity, deaths being brought forward and the mild Omicron winter of 2021-22 go unmentioned as factors in the low mortality of that 12-month period, however.
Prof. Sridhar then claims that in the pandemic’s third year, death rates rose in many countries as they opened up again – a truly bizarre statement. The ‘third year’ refers to the period March 2022 to February 2023. The U.K. removed its last restrictions in July 2021. Blaming excess deaths after March 2022 on reopening is plain nonsense when the country had already been fully open for seven months. Where’s BBC Verify when you need it?
Responding to Sweden’s success, Prof. Sridhar commented that it’s hard to read straight across from Scandinavian countries to the U.K., arguing “we’d never look like either Sweden or Norway”, and describing them as “healthier, wealthier and more equal” countries that are very different to the U.K. Right. So, the U.K. would have had a disaster of Fergusonian proportions had it failed to impose stay-at-home orders and mask coercion on the population. But Sweden is populated entirely by rich, athletic socialists so could get away with it. That’s anthropology, I guess.
To balance that egregious piece of minimising of a key pandemic outcome from its favourite public health expert, the BBC then included a quote from an actual medical specialist, who praised Sweden for showing the world the folly of its lockdown and mask groupthink. No, wait, that didn’t happen – I was mistaking the BBC for an impartial public news service that actually cares about facts.
Well, it can’t hide the results, even if it can wheel out Devi to play them down.
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Yes but no but yes but no but yes but no but yes but no but…
Another nice piece of irrefutable data demonstrating the UK should always have followed Sweden’s lead ( until Johnson dropped a bollock ) but instead went ahead and cocked everything up in the most ruinous way possible, perfect for being studied in the context of the Covid Inquiry. Yes how will Whitty explain this uncomfortable truth I wonder..
Simple. Put up a chart referring to old data and…
No, wait… That won’t work. The old data doesn’t support the narrative either.
In an alternative universe, Boris Johnson grows a pair, holds the line, Britain stands with Sweden as an example of the huge benefits of maintaining a free society, this has much greater global repercussion – because (sorry Sweden) the UK zagging would have had much more global impact than just Sweden – and Johnson is now the most celebrated national leader in the world with huge popularity ratings.
One would hope that the man deep down came to realise this and decided to commit properly from now on to the free, liberal values he once pretended to espouse.
But I think it’s more likely that he blames his dumpster fire political career on others and in his lowest moment is recruited to be another washed up ex-leader like Blair to prostitute himself for the global oligarchy.
Sometimes a frog…………..
Johnson had no bollocks to drop. A ballless wonder, he proved to be.
If only Johnson had checked the data properly and had the courage to follow Sweden’s lead, both he and our country and many people dying or dead now would be in a much better place. To do that, he would have needed the courage to get rid of the totally incompetent Sage Committee and substitute it with a smaller group of proper scientists who actually had detailed knowledge about viruses and pandemics and could have advised him accurately.
I just hope the massively expensive enquiry into covid identifies how useless the Sage committee were, but I doubt it will. It will only be another waste of time and our money, dishing out another whitewash report submitted far too long after the terrible effects of the government’s disasterous actions have lost their news focus.
BTW, it is not looking good for these five poor people stuck and lost 2.5 miles under the sea in a tiny submersible. The time has just passed that they were estimated to run out of oxygen. It’s down to pure luck now due to the massive search area and no power on the sub. You can get live updates here;
”The British government said Thursday it has dispatched one of its senior submariners, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Kantharia, to assist with the rescue mission.
Kantharia was already embedded in the United States’ Atlantic submarine fleet and joined the rescue effort Tuesday, a spokesperson for No. 10 Downing Street said by email.
Britain is also providing a Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft to transport equipment involved with the search.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/missing-titanic-submersible-live-updates-rcna90538
The epitome of misadventure…
Well it seems like all is lost and luck wasn’t on their side after all. Debris has been found. I assume by this last update that the sub imploded. But as I’m the only person who gives a f*ck, evidently, there’s no need to share the link so whatever…back to masks and jabs it is. Rinse repeat.
Sorry Mogs it is interesting to keep updated, on such matters. But not a great deal of sympathy. If I want to see a graveyard I can wander over to my local church.
They knew the risks …. or should have. I find the idea of paying £hundreds of thousands to examine the scene of a tragedy and what has officially been declared a grave-site of over 1000 people quite ghoulish.
You couldn’t have paid me to get on that submersible.
And how many of these deaths were caused by the vax?
Or Mizadolam.
Or other drugs sold by pharma….
From the BBC article:
Oh FFS! Built a database?
Perhaps they might look at the Human Mortality Database https://www.mortality.org/Data/STMF where they can find weekly mortality data for many countries.
If they like they could look at annual data. Sweden’s goes back to 1751. The UK’s only goes back to 1922 – just after the partition of Ireland. If they tried they might be able to spot some long term trends.
A couple of things to note: China’s data is not covered at all and Russia’s annual data stops in 2014 – perhaps they don’t meet quality (credibility) criteria?
The following chart shows Age-Standardised Mortality Rate (ASMR) for England and Wales (separately) based on the European Standard Population 2013. ASMR is a convenient way of comparing a country with its own history or that of other countries. However, it can also conceal changes in death rates between age groups.
If instead of years based on Jan 1 to Jan 1 we look at mid-year to mid-year years the combined England and Wales chart from 2011-2022 looks like this:
Note the huge dip in mortality in the year to mid-2019 – the so-called ‘dry tinder’. The dark blue solid line shows a made-up adjustment increasing the 2019 figure by 55 and decreasing the 2020 figure by the same amount; it just shows that the low death rate before neatly balances the high death rate during 2020.
The various coloured dotted lines are straight trend lines based on different selections of years. I find the 2011-2022 trend (ie all the data) most convincing.
In a few weeks time we should have the ONS data to end of week 26 of 2023 and I’ll be able to extend the chart by another year.
I’m already getting a sense that the wrong questions are being asked of the wrong people, and the outcome will be simply that we should have locked down sooner, harder, with more facemasks and more vax. Anything else is just not open for discussion. Then the actions for the next ‘pandemic’ are pretty much set in stone, aren’t they.? A sham, if I’m being kind.
The really insulting point about this fake inquiry is that many, many people will draw a good butty from it for many years , all off taxpayers, and for an outcome that any of us on here could write in half a day.
Absolutely sick of it already and because we know the end result I truly CGAF.
Please don’t give up. We must try to get the counter-narrative talked about.
Thanks you but this inquiry is nothing more than a P. take.
Nobody is talking about the “counter narrative” in this inquiry, and save a few diehard sceptics everybody I know believes there was a good pandemic and wants to move on.
I will continue to resist as best I can and give my views when asked, but most people are sheep who will only wake up when the wolf is taking its first bite.
Except that there will be lot of evidence on file, it we make good use of it in the future. There will be a lot of junk, but there could be one or two useful nuggets in due course.
It’s a rabbit hole.
No inquiry is required because there was no pandemic- it’s a figment of the collectively insane imagination triggered by evil people.
The only response required is “prove there was a pandemic”.
Anyway, my objections to lockdowns and all the other crap are not in the first instance practical or empirical but philosophical. I don’t believe any state should have the kind of powers that were exercised, no matter what the supposed emergency, nor do I believe that I should be responsible in any way for other people’s health.
For the MODS- there is a posting problem on the “Elites weaponised” thread.
The pandemic (that never was) ended in June 2020 – as evidenced by ONS weekly deaths. From then on, it was unscientific interventions and restrictions that increased deaths – until January 2021. Then we see the deaths mounting, year on year, due to the dreaded jab.
So we are not comparing ‘pandemic’ mortality which was only 3 months from three years. We are comparing rates of manslaughter.
“We are comparing rates of manslaughter.”
An excellent point.
Interesting that you’ve found some numbers on this issue. They don’t like them on the Beeb News! Another related comparison could be to review the US states independently, rather than cobbling it all together, as there were some States that were more in line with the Swedish attitude – e.g. Florida, and a few others. You’d need to be familiar with the variations in age profile in various US states, especially at that time of year, to make good use of the stats, but it could bolster the view that some of them panicked, like some places on this side of the pond.
The BBC: here are some facts. But we don’t want you to pay any attention to them; here’s some propaganda which we approve of.
Same applies to ALL MSM.
The BBC are a failed lying heap of crap when it comes to its news output, why are we still being effectively forced to pay for it?
What a nasty piece of work is Sridhar. Do us all a favour and go to Africa and count wild monkeys – what you might actually be qualified for.