Sweden’s death rate during the Covid pandemic is among the lowest in Europe, despite the country refusing to impose strict lockdowns, according to new figures from the World Health Organisation.
Sweden, which was criticised in the early stages of the pandemic for resisting a mandatory lockdown, had fewer deaths per capita than much of Europe.
In 2020 and 2021, the country had an average excess death rate of 56 per 100,000 - compared to 109 in the UK, 111 in Spain, 116 in Germany and 133 in Italy.
Although Sweden fared worse than its Nordic neighbours, lower rates of obesity - a key risk factor for severe coronavirus disease - and a better-resourced healthcare system helped limit fatalities in the country.
“The lesson from Sweden is to invest in your population’s health and have less inequality,” Prof Devi Sridhar, the chairman of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, told The Telegraph.
As @Twnfinn carefully made clear there are many things to take into account. He seems more optimistic than I am that in the future we will have a balanced analysis. Probably because too many people have attached their beliefs with their ego and will refuse to accept that they could possibly have been wrong.
I certainly did, but it seems you didn’t read the other one I posted above.
A lower rate of obesity than your neighbors doesn’t count for much when more than half your own population is obese or overweight. Sweden does well on that metric comparatively, because:
A cursory glance at their daily list suggests that this is clearly not true, though. The fact that they’ve admitted to previously over-egging the pudding (and as I’ve pointed out in other places, have made egregiously misleading statements about vaccine-related issues) there doesn’t seem to be much reason to treat the ongoing reports as meaningful.
The fundamental problem here is this: stating that a 90-year-old patient with cancer died “of COVID” is not helpful when national policy revolves around the accuracy of such statements. Such people die all the time with respiratory diseases - it’s an incredibly common way for them to go. In 2019, respiratory disease would have been noted as a contributory factor, but not as the proximate cause.
Raw death rates need to be treated with a certain degree of caution. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, Taiwan’s death rate has jumped in manner that can’t possibly be explained by COVID deaths, but Taiwan has not yet released an ASMR for 2021. Until we see that figure, it’s hard to be certain what’s actually going on.
Or tested positive with a flawed test announced by Drosten on New Year’s Day in 2020 specifically for c19 that they decided was a pandemic in March 2020.
