5 Charts That Show Sweden’s Strategy Worked. The Lockdowns Failed; Sweden Shows there's a better way to combat COVID-19.

Foundation for Economic Education ^ | 10/09/2020 | Jon Miltimore

[SeekAndFind]

Government officials in Sweden announced this week that the government expects to maintain its mild restrictions on gatherings “for at least another year” to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Unlike most other European countries and nations around the world, Sweden declined to initiate a nationwide lockdown or mask mandates, opting instead for a policy that restricted large gatherings and relied on social responsibility to slow transmission of the virus.

For months, Sweden was criticized for its decision to forego an economic lockdown.

“Sweden becomes an example of how not to handle COVID-19,” CBS declared in its headline in a July article.

Sweden had become a “cautionary tale,” the New York Times declared the same month.

“They are leading us to catastrophe,” The Guardian warned in March.

Dozens of similar examples can be found. With every passing week, however, it’s becoming more clear that Sweden got the virus right. For starters, Swedish officials point out that even if lockdowns did save lives, they cannot long be endured.

"The measures that are being taken in Europe are not sustainable, we're trying to find a level that is steady and that keeps the spread down. We can't get rid of it, but we can keep it down at a reasonable level," Johan Carlson, the director general of Sweden's public health agency, said in an interview with public broadcaster SVT on Sunday.

It’s also worth pointing out that Sweden has avoided some of the economic carnage of its European neighbours experienced by implementing harsh lockdowns. In August, the BBC pointed out that Sweden’s economy experienced much less damage during the pandemic.

Both of these facts help explain why Sweden has not witnessed the widespread social unrest other nations have seen.

"A certain fatigue is setting in, this has been going on for a number of months,” Carlson admitted. “But we are not seeing anger or aggression, we're not seeing the same reactions as in Europe.”

This should come as no surprise. Life in Sweden is still relatively normal. People never stopped going to restaurants and bars, pools or parks. Schools and places of business remained open. Hence, the mass protests, violence, and spikes of mental health deterioration, drug overddoses, and suicide nations around the world have witnessed in 2020 have been notably absent in Sweden.

Perhaps most importantly, Sweden’s “lighter touch” seems to have tamed COVID-19. While many European countries that implemented lockdowns are witnessing a resurgence of the virus, Sweden’s cases and deaths remain a stark contrast to other European nations.

Not only no mask mandate; almost no mask wearing in Sweden. Never closed. God bless this free country. pic.twitter.com/6ufoUPXIgW

— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreyatucker) October 7, 2020

It’s true there was concern around a slight uptick in cases that began in mid-September, but the increase is well below other European nations, which has resulted in fewer COVID-19 related deaths.

Yinon Weiss, a founder of RallyPoint and a Harvard Business School grad, has shown, Sweden’s current daily death rate is exponentially lower—25x, 10x, 7x—than many of its European counterparts that initiated strict lockdowns, such as Spain, the United Kingdom, and France.

Sweden: An Update

This must be getting awkward for Spain, France, and the UK locking down again. Sweden is enjoying open schools, open businesses, and no masks.

Current daily death rates compared to Sweden:

Spain 25x
France 10x
United Kingdom 7x

(1/4)

pic.twitter.com/CMAtVSIIcR — Yinon Weiss (@yinonw) October 7, 2020

Throughout the pandemic, many have claimed Sweden can’t be compared to these larger nations, since they have higher population density. The link between COVID-19 and urban density is weak at best, but even if you account for population density data show that Sweden’s capital of Stockholm has outperformed American cities that locked down like Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. (And of course New York.)

"Compared to cities of similar density, the Swedes still outperform with no lockdowns or masks.

The truth will not be hidden forever.

Get on the right side of history." - @yinonw pic.twitter.com/gIS0EUAdE4 — Jon Miltimore (Parler: @Miltimore79) (@miltimore79) October 8, 2020

Even the Nordic countries with low death rates that Sweden often is unfavorably compared to are now seeing a sharp rise in cases (though death in all Nordic countries thankfully remains low).

A look at #Covid_19 cases in Nordic countries.

Covid deaths in all four countries remains low.

pic.twitter.com/Jpy5UhZ8nO — Jon Miltimore (Parler: @Miltimore79) (@miltimore79) October 8, 2020

Critics of Sweden’s policy will point out that Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate is still higher than its Nordic neighbors—the result of a failure to adequately protect its eldercare homes—but the goal was never to have the lowest coronavirus death rate in Europe. It was to limit the spread of the virus and prevent hospital systems from being overwhelmed.

Despite predictions that its laissez-faire policy would result in mass infection and 96,000 deaths, Sweden succeeded and its per capita death toll today remains well below many of its European neighbors.

The last three months have been particularly striking, Weiss points out.

With every passing week we’re seeing that the world’s lockdown experiment failed, and failed horribly—destroying millions of businesses, tens of millions of jobs, and causing widespread mental and physical health deterioration. (There’s a reason European leaders such as Boris Johnson are now consulting with Sweden’s top infectious disease expert, Anders Tegnell.)

As John Tierney recently explained in City Journal, the best that can be said of stay-at-home orders is that they may have made sense before we had solid data and little clue about the type of virus we were dealing with. We know better now. There is no correlation between lockdown stringency and COVID-19 deaths, while their harms are induspitable.

This is why thousands of medical practitioners and public health scientists have signed a new declaration—the Great Barrington Declaration—expressing grave concerns over the adverse effects of lockdowns and calling for a more targeted approach.

In June, following publication of an NPR report that showed COVID-19 is not as dangerous as first believed, I suggested lockdowns could prove to be the biggest expert “fail” since the Iraq War.

Four months later, the evidence only looks stronger.

Jon Miltimore

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Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

[Skooz]

Bfl

[arthurus]

Sweden's example cannot be followed because it does not offer the control that the shutdowns entail. many of us said after the first rush of bad news about the Chinese virus that it should be allowed to run its course then later when the nature of it was more apparent, that the at-riskers- should be protected as much as possible but that the rest should be treated as if this is another bout of seasonal flu. A virus like this cannot be contained in the modern world that is all linked up. Heck, such things could not be contined in centuries past with less travel because there has for thousands of years ben contact and trade between civilizations. When a benign plague such as this one(in comparison to Bubonic) is met by lockdowns and rigid control it merely lengthens the virus's stay in the population. It does not cut down on lethality, merely spreads it out and causes a lot more ancillary deaths from depression and untreated other diseases like cancer and heart attack. Let it run and the deaths come in one wave and immunity follows. Even the Spanish Flu of a century ago could not have been mitigated with modern prevention methods though the lethality of that one in modern America would have been much less because of modern treatment capabilities.

But that cannot be done when there is so much political profit and opportunity for the powerful to clamp down controls on the population which will be lifted reluctantly if at all.

[Sergio]

bkmk

[SeekAndFind]

RE: many of us said after the first rush of bad news about the Chinese virus that it should be allowed to run its course then later when the nature of it was more apparent, that the at-riskers- should be protected as much as possible but that the rest should be treated as if this is another bout of seasonal flu

_________________________________

At the start of the pandemic, we can understand the need to lockdown as we did not know the extent of the virus’ lethality and transmissibility. Also, we did not want to overwhelm our hospitals with sick people.

Now, after 7 months, we already know a lot about the virus and what Demographic it is most lethal to. There really is no reason to lockdown totally.

[MinorityRepublican]

Interesting.

[DoodleBob]

There really is no reason to lockdown totally.

I agree, but New Zealand disagrees.

[calenel]

And most people in Sweden live alone. There was plenty of mitigation and social distancing, contrary to the FluBro narrative. Also, take the deliberate murder of people in retirement homes by certain Dem Governors and even the massive ODD in the US still has better outcomes. Overall, Sweden, without many of the factors present in the US, did not do that much better, and as noted, without the geronticide committed by Cuomo, et. al., they did significantly worse. And they’ve been fudging their numbers to boot.

[Grampa Dave]

The reopening of schools, colleges, restaurants and maybe even churches are being held up by CV19 higher rates with so called migrant workers, illegals, and ???? in their rigged testing.

Lab Coat Tyranny: California is using “public health” as a rationale to push progressive political goals.

This is a big cracking of the tyranny code being used to destroy our cities, counties and states.

Lab Coat Tyranny
California is using “public health” as a rationale to push progressive political goals.
Christopher F. Rufo

October 9, 2020 Covid-19 California Economy, finance, and budgets:

Public health authorities in California have unveiled a “Blueprint for a Safer Economy” that requires counties to meet new “health equity metrics” in order to emerge from the current Covid-19 lockdowns. It’s a broad experiment in social justice. Under the plan, counties must reduce “disparities in levels of transmission” in “low-income, Black, Latino, [and] Pacific Islander” communities before they can move forward with reopening. In effect, local businesses must remain closed until local bureaucrats are satisfied that ill-defined racial quotas have been met.

The underlying assumption of the blueprint is that race-based coronavirus disparities are the result of “systemic racism,” despite zero evidence that the state’s coronavirus policies have been discriminatory. The plan ignores potential differences in culture, behavior, and underlying health, resting instead on the premise that racism is the driving force behind every disparate outcome. The blueprint also subverts the democratic process. Unelected public health officials are restricting essential freedoms, including mobility, worship, and economic activity, without deliberation by the state legislature or the possibility of review or appeal.

Unfortunately, the California blueprint is just part of a broader pattern of state governments using public health as a rationale for seizing power. Throughout the pandemic, blue-state politicians have appealed to science as justification for long-term economic lockdowns, mask mandates, and other emergency measures, regardless of whether these policies have been sanctioned by state legislatures or voters. Science becomes the highest authority; citizens must obey.

Yet progressive leaders have been willing immediately to jettison science when it conflicts with their pre-existing political priorities. Earlier this summer, leading epidemiologists pilloried conservative lockdown protestors—declaring them a threat to public health—but then endorsed the much larger Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in May. In short, they created a policy of “science for thee, but not for me.”

The disproportionate victims of any attempt to race-code the criteria for reopening in California will be the poor, the marginalized, and the nonwhite—the very people whom the equity policies are supposed to help. If, that is, Los Angeles County fails to reopen because it falls short of its “health equity metrics,” the Zoom class of intellectuals, public health officials, and progressive politicians will celebrate its own good intentions, even as bartenders, waitresses, taxi drivers, and small shopkeepers—many of them minorities—find themselves out of work.

The public should be on alert. If the progressive-scientific establishment can simply dictate policy outside the democratic process by appealing to “public health equity”—a vague concept that can extend to almost every facet of human life—voters may soon find themselves at the mercy of a new “soft totalitarianism,” as author Rod Dreher has characterized it. Citizens with a basic respect for freedom should resist this new encroachment. It degrades science, language, and democracy all at once, and acknowledges no natural limit to its power. Tyranny in a lab coat would still be tyranny.

Christopher F. Rufo is a contributing editor of City Journal and director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty. He’s directed four documentaries for PBS, including his new film, America Lost, which tells the story of three “forgotten American cities.” Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

https://www.city-journal.org/california-race-coding-criteria-for-reopening

[SeekAndFind]

RE: But New Zealand disagrees

Question: is New Zealand going to lockdown and close her borders indefinitely?

What will happen if they reopen? Will the virus then bypass them?

[DoodleBob]

Indeed, it already did, and they locked down again.

Oh, and their 2QGDP was down 12.2% vs the US' 9.6% contraction. more in this later.

[diatomite]

Sweden doesn’t have the black and Hispanic population that the US does. A lot of US deaths were concentrated in those groups.

[Songcraft]

bfl

[matt04]

All very good points the very telling aspect is the fact that not one government officials who supports these lockdowns primarily in democrat run states can say with any certainty what metrics or things must be met before the restrictions are Completely lifted. They’ve had months to come up with Definition of when the “crisis” Is over but have yet to give a single firm answer.

Is it a treatment? Is it a vaccine? Is it both? What if there’s never a vaccine that is totally effective? They have yet to answer a single one of those questions

[MAGAthon]

congrats Sweden and thank-you for charting your own course.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Sweden doesn’t have the black and Hispanic population that the US does. A lot of US deaths were concentrated in those groups.

In fact, data shows that a lot of Sweden’s deaths were in their immigrant population (from the middle east ). I wonder why that is...

[TigersEye]

... and relied on social responsibility ...

IOWs the Swedish government treated their citizens like adults. They gave recommendations, not orders, and the citizens responded like adults and used common sense precautions where it applied. I'd bet on it!

[arthurus]

In California and New York they will attempt to keep the restrictions in place permanently until the people who don’t like it have either left the state or finally accepted it as the normality of life. Then they will start to institute permissions and licences to do the things that used to e just part of living. There will come internal passports for travel in the state, for instance, and registration of one’s location and travel plans, and always the fees.

[Pajamajan]

bttt

[arthurus]

And we know more and more about how to treat and new methods are spreading slowly against leftist opposition but spreading nevertheless. Candace Owens got the virus recently and was denied medication that she needed due to asthma complications because it was not PC to allow a nebulizer (which my wife got when she got WuHan pneumonia last March and which fixed her up in three days). It almost killed Candace.