Don’t weep for Sweden; it is now one of least infected countries

First word AND it will likely cel- ebrate Christmas normally this year.

Some readers will be incensed with me for venturing to write again about Sweden’s remarkable record against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-9) pandemic without locking down its economy for even a single day.

They get livid because they have been deluded by groupthink about the imperative for every country to impose an economic lockdown. They are offended by Sweden’s defiance and believe the country should suffer for it.

Far from suffering, however, Sweden has been harvesting lately a lot of good news and benefits for its policy independence.

Many media organizations persist in portraying Sweden as a colossal failure because of its nolockdown policy.

On my part, after considerable research, I became a fan of Sweden‘s approach because I thought it made a lot of sense and I thought a lockdown policy would be devastating for a lot of countries, including the Philippines.

Update on Sweden

On September 4, London’s MailOnline provided an update on the pandemic situation in Sweden, which it headlined, “Lockdown-free Sweden’s coronavirus case rate is now lower than Nordic neighbors Denmark and Norway.”

I reproduce excerpts of the news report below:

“Lockdown-free Sweden saw its coronavirus case rate drop below its Nordic neighbors Denmark and Norway today to just 12 new infections per million people over the past week.

In comparison, Norway saw 14 new infections per million people, and Denmark saw 18, meaning Sweden had an average case rate over seven days lower than its neighbors for the first time since March.

‘Sweden has gone from being one of the countries with the most infection in Europe, to one of those with the least infection in Europe,’ the country’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said at a press conference earlier this week.

Meanwhile, ‘many other countries have seen a rather dramatic increase,’ he added.

At the height of the pandemic, Sweden’s infection rate dwarfed that of its neighbors, who did implement a lockdown.

At the height of its pandemic, Sweden chose not to lock down. Now, for the first time since March, its infection rate per one million people has dropped below that of its Nordic neighbors Denmark and Norway

At its peak on June 19, Sweden was seeing 108 new infections per million people, compared to Denmark and Norway’s eight and three, respectively.

The number of deaths in Sweden is now averaging at two to three per day, compared to a peak of over a hundred per day it suffered in mid-April.

Furthermore, its capital Stockholm, the epicenter of Sweden’s pandemic during the peak months of April and May, registered its lowest number of cases since March last week.

In Stockholm, 250 of 14,000 people tested last week were infected with the virus, a positive rate of 1.8 percent.

Meanwhile, Denmark registered 179 new cases on Friday, its highest daily total for more than four months.

To add to positive signs in Sweden, a test last week of 2,500 randomly selected people found not one had coronavirus.

In comparison, in a similar test, 0.9 percent were found to have the virus at the end of April and 0.3 per cent at the end of May.

Announcing the results on Thursday, Dr Tegnell’s deputy at the Public Health Agency of Sweden, Karin Tegmark Wisell, said: ‘We interpret this as meaning there is not currently a widespread infection among people who do not have symptoms.’

Lockdown- free Sweden has been controversial for its liberal attitude to controlling the pandemic, preferring instead to let it run through the population to create a ‘herd immunity.’

The country’s latest figures may silence some of its critics, and will come as a relief to those who advocated for the approach and came under fire in May as the country saw the highest per-capita death rate in the world for a period.

Instead of implementing a lockdown, Sweden’s measures focused on voluntary social distancing guidance and hygiene recommendations, and it also refused to recommend the use of face masks, but has said they may be advised in the future.

Many businesses have also continued to operate, meaning the economy has fared significantly better than most.

But unlike many countries in Europe that are seeing a resurgence of cases, including France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy, Sweden’s figures seem to be continuing to head downwards.

‘What we see now is that the sustainable policy might be slower in getting results, but it will get results eventually,’ state Dr. Tegnell said. ‘And then we also hope that the result will be more stable.’

Speaking on television, the doctor said that it might now be possible for grandparents — who were advised to stay at home and isolate and avoid close contact with their grandchildren — may now be able to spend Christmas with them.

‘I think its probably possible that we can celebrate a little more of a normal Christmas than we would have thought otherwise,’ Tegnell said, but he advised families to ‘think it through properly,’ and have ‘sensible arrangements’ for keeping distance.

So far, Sweden has reported 5,832 deaths caused by Covid-19, more than six times as many as Denmark (264) and Norway (629) combined, and is also carrying out fewer tests per capita than its neighbors.

Per Follin, department head at Stockholm’s Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, said last week’s testing was the ‘lowest level in a very long time.’

Stockholm, the epicenter of Sweden’s coronavirus outbreak, registered its fewest cases ‘in a very long time’ last week as just 250 of 14,000 people tested were infected with the virus

He told AFP in an email that they can’t ‘really compare now and then’ as widespread testing was not under way in Sweden until June, but they could say that figures have declined ‘since week 10 or 11, possibly even earlier.’

Before June, Stockholm only tested serious cases which were admitted to hospital.

‘The reason we have relative low transmission now is largely due to the fact that so many Stockholmers are following the recommendations to stay home when you’re sick, wash hands and keep your distance,’ Follin said in a statement.

The number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care is also currently low, with six patients in Stockholm hospitals as of August 31. This is compared to 225 at the end of April, according to local health authority Region Stockholm.

As of Thursday, Sweden had the world’s eighth highest death toll at 577 per million inhabitants, mainly due to its failure to protect the elderly in nursing homes in the early stages of the pandemic.”

Lockdowns no help; opening up no harm

As a companion to the report on Sweden, I want to quote some paragraphs from a fine analysis by Donald Luskin in the WallStreetJournal on September 2. I want to share this especially with the members of the IATF because of its sobering message. Mr. Luskin wrote:

“Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States has now carried out two large- scale experiments in public health — first, in March and April, the lockdown of the economy to arrest the spread of the virus, and second, since mid-April, the reopening of the economy. The results are in. Counter-intuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread, and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections.

Given the high economic costs and well-documented long-term health consequences beyond Covid-19, imposing lockdowns appears to have been a large policy error. At first, when little was known, officials acted in ways they thought prudent. But now evidence proves that lockdowns were an expensive treatment with serious side effects and no benefit to society.

There is no escaping the evidence that, at minimum, heavy lockdowns were no more effective than light ones, and that opening up a lot was no more harmful than opening up a little. So, where is the science that would justify the heavy lockdowns many officials are still demanding?

With the evidence we now possess, even the most risk- averse health officials should hesitate before demanding the next lockdown and causing the next recession.”

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases should memorize this.