• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

If ‘Sweden Won’, Why are Swedish Birthrates Plummeting?

by Robert Kogon
13 October 2023 9:00 AM

It is chapter and verse nowadays among COVID-19 policy dissidents – or at least those who get amplified the most on X – that ‘Sweden won’: namely, by bucking the trend and refusing to lock down, taking the initial hit of higher excess mortality at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic but ultimately being rewarded by lower excess mortality over the official course of the pandemic as a whole. Graphs like the below, showing Sweden with the lowest excess mortality in all of Europe during the pandemic period, are widely-cited as evidence of this victory of Sweden’s ‘no lockdown’ approach.

But sceptics of the Covid measures have been spectacularly wrong-footed in citing such data, since if Sweden did indeed resist lockdown, it by no means resisted mass vaccination. As the below Statista graph illustrates, Sweden in fact had one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Europe.

If the vaccination ranking is not quite a mirror image of the mortality ranking, it is nonetheless striking that while high-vax Sweden has the lowest excess mortality in the mortality graph, Bulgaria, which has the lowest vaccination rate, has the highest excess mortality. Indeed, the entire top of the mortality table, i.e. the countries with the highest mortality, consists of relatively low-vax Eastern European countries. Hence, if the data in the first graph is to be believed, it would appear to demonstrate less that ‘Sweden won’ – since virtually all the other countries locked down anyway – and more that COVID-19 vaccination ‘won’.

It is perhaps worth noting here that the first graph comes precisely from Statistics Sweden – not exactly a neutral source in this connection – and was commissioned by the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet for the purpose of an interview with Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s COVID-19 response.

But, in any event, a group of dissident Swedish doctors known as the Doctors’ Appeal or Läkaruppropet has been challenging the new orthodoxy on Sweden’s alleged Covid-response ‘win’, calling attention to other data which look like anything but ‘winning’. For if Swedish mortality has remained relatively stable, Swedish ‘natality’ has in fact plummeted.  

As can be seen in the below graph from the Läkaruppropet group, Swedish birth rates have been below the prior 10-year trend for no less than 19 months now and the Swedish birth shortfall has got progressively worse, reaching a low of minus-15.5% in April of this year. The Läkaruppropet doctors point out, moreover, that the decline in Swedish birth rates began after COVID-19 vaccinations were rolled out to women of childbearing age.

But there is an obvious paradox here: if toxicities of COVID-19 vaccines had such a major impact on natality, why did they not also have a major impact on mortality?

Well, the Läkaruppropet doctors suggest that they may well have. They note that Sweden’s 2022 excess death was the second highest in the last 20 years and suggest that it would in fact have been the highest were it not for the iatrogenic harms caused by the treatments received by vulnerable Swedes who contracted COVID-19 in 2020.

The famous ‘Sweden won’ graph reproduced above uses a three-year (2017-2019) pre-pandemic average as baseline for calculating excess mortality. (For the details of the methodology, see Bjorn Lomborg’s post here.) Using that same baseline and the official Swedish statistics here, we can calculate that Sweden had just over 4% excess mortality in 2022, up from just over 1% in 2021.

Perhaps this is a relative victory compared to some other countries. But for the third year of the pandemic – by which time Sweden should surely have been enjoying the benefits of herd immunity to COVID-19 – it is hard to see how this can be regarded as a victory in absolute terms.

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.

Tags: Birth rateCOVID-19EuropeLockdownSwedenVaccine

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Earthquakes Blamed on Humans in New Climate Alarm Letter from Pope Francis

Next Post

Transgender Cyclists Take Gold and Silver Medals in Chicago

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

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.

36 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

Ten Things George Soros is Funding in the UK

15 May 2025
by Charlotte Gill

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Chris Packham is the New St Francis of Assisi

15 May 2025
by Sallust

‘Trans Toddlers’ Allowed Gender Treatment on NHS

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

Chris Packham is the New St Francis of Assisi

36

‘Trans Toddlers’ Allowed Gender Treatment on NHS

36

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

21

News Round-Up

13

Ten Things George Soros is Funding in the UK

21

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Daily Mail Misses the Real Story About Long-Term Stable Antarctica Ice in Dumb Quip About Climate ‘Deniers’

15 May 2025
by Chris Morrison

POSTS BY DATE

October 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Sep   Nov »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment