Sweden, which never had lockdown, sees COVID-19 cases plummet as rest of Europe suffers spike

[Leongsam]

newsweek.com

Sweden, which never had lockdown, sees COVID-19 cases plummet as rest of Europe suffers spike
By Soo Kim On 7/30/20 at 8:43 AM EDT

5-6 minutes


Amid fears over a potential second wave of the novel coronavirus across Europe, new infections in Sweden, where full lockdown measures were not implemented, have mostly declined since late June.

The number of new cases per 100,000 people in Sweden reported over the last 14 days since July 29 dropped by 54 percent from the figure reported over 14 days prior to then, according to the latest report Wednesday from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Meanwhile, other parts of Europe have reported large spikes in new cases over the same period, including Spain, France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands, which have seen increases between 40 and 200 percent over the last month, according to the latest WHO report Wednesday.

The seven-day rolling average of Sweden's daily new cases has been dropping consistently since June 29. Its daily case count has been mostly decreasing since June 24, when it reported 1,803 new infections, its largest single-day spike since the outbreak began, according to data compiled by Worldometer.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new deaths in Sweden has also been declining since around April 15, when it reported a record daily death count of 115. The country's latest seven-day rolling averages for daily new cases and daily new deaths stand at 154 and 2.

However, the Scandinavian nation ranks eighth among countries with the highest number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people. It outranks the U.S. and Brazil, which are the world's first and second worst-hit nations in terms of total cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Last week Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at Sweden's public health agency, who has led the country's COVID-19 response, said the nation's controversial anti-lockdown strategy has been a success "to a great extent," in an interview with UnHerd.

While an official lockdown was never ordered, Tegnell noted: "We have cut down on movement in society quite a lot. We have compared how much we travel in Scandinavian countries, and the decrease in travel is the same in Sweden as in neighbouring countries. In many ways the voluntary measures we put in place in Sweden have been just as effective as complete lockdowns in other countries.

"We are now seeing rapidly falling cases, we have continuously had healthcare that has been working, there have been free beds at any given time, never any crowding in the hospitals.

"The failure [of the strategy] has of course been the death toll…that has been very much related to the long-term care facilities in Sweden. Now that has improved, we see a lot less cases in those facilities," Tegnell said.

People in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, where a lockdown was never issued, pictured on July 27, 2020. Getty Images

When asked whether having a lockdown in Sweden could have made a difference on the impact of the outbreak, Tegnell told UnHerd: "It would have made maybe some difference, we don't know…we also have to look at what are the negative effect of lockdowns, and that has not been done very much so far."

 

[Leongsam]

townhall.com

These ‘Inconvenient’ Data Patterns Destroy the Established Coronavirus Narrative
Scott Morefield

7-8 minutes


No matter what position you take on lockdowns, masks, Hydroxychloroquine, or any other COVID-related issue, there’s a doctor or expert out there whose opinion you can easily grab and use to bolster your case. Indeed, most people have formed their opinions on what should be done about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and consequently have decided which “experts” they want to listen to, follow on social media, and share material from. For better or worse, to a large degree, we’re firmly entrenched in our own echo chambers. So to a degree, appealing to authority is almost a moot point at this point in the game, whether your “authority” is the CDC and WHO, who have consistently been wrong more than they have been right, or that group of doctors who were censored and even dismissed from jobs last week for daring to express an unpopular yet sincerely held medical opinion.

What isn't a moot point, however, is observable patterns, which exist independently of what any of the “experts” have to say. Now I’m no doctor, and neither are most of you, but I am a functioning, thinking adult with at least half a brain (some of you may dispute this, and you’re certainly entitled to your opinion!). I’m also capable of analyzing statistics, reading charts, and noticing patterns. And the patterns I’m noticing have me scratching my head. As someone who doesn’t sit well with cognitive dissonance, media gaslighting, and especially governmental overreach, if I’m being told I shouldn’t or can’t go out and that I’m not allowed to breathe free air when I do, the evidence on the ground should damn-well comport with the “logic” they are giving us to justify their extreme measures. But they aren’t, not in any observable, logical way.

Let’s start with Sweden, that quasi-socialist winter wonderland of woke snowflakes that somehow decided to go against the grain on COVID and consequently went seemingly overnight from the world’s darling to the world’s next Khmer Rouge. Not only did Sweden NOT implement draconian lockdowns when this whole thing started, they never even mandated mask-wearing (oh, the horror!). According to nearly all the “experts,” Sweden was supposed to be something like a scene out of the Book of Revelation by now, complete with rivers of blood and bodies piled up to horses’ bridles.
Hospitals were going to be overrun. People were going to be dying in the streets. There was going to be carnage unlike nothing anyone had ever seen...
Except, none of that happened. Not even close. Absent an early Cuomo-style failure to adequately protect nursing homes that hurt their numbers early on, that country’s strategy was a tremendous success. Sweden implemented a few sustainable, common-sense measures, bent toward the storm, and rode it through. And now, they are reaping the rewards. Last week, Bloomberg reported on the country’s “‘Promising’ Covid-19 Data as New Cases Plunge.” State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and the Health Agency of Sweden report declining cases since a late June peak and a death rate that has plunged right along with it. “That Sweden has come down to these levels is very promising,” said Tegnell. “The curves are going down and the curves for the seriously ill are beginning to approach zero.”

Everyone from the lamestream media to President Trump himself disparaged Sweden’s approach, and they were all ridiculously, cartoonishly wrong. Now that Sweden has obtained some degree of herd immunity and is back to some sense of relative normalcy, where do they go to get their apology?

Other inconvenient patterns exist closer to home. Consider South Dakota, where its courageous leader and (hopefully) future presidential candidate, Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, steadfastly refused to shut down her state nor require masks. Aside from a bad outbreak in a meat-packing plant early on, the infection and death rate in that admittedly less population-dense state has remained consistently low.

Want a more populous state? How about Georgia, where Brian Kemp was supposedly conducting an “experiment in human sacrifice” by reopening his state too soon and not mandating masks at the state level. Cases did rise (but haven’t spiked) nearly TWO MONTHS after their lockdown ended, but deaths are still below 4,000 statewide and are nowhere near any sort of drastic spike. Now, it even looks like hospitalizations have peaked and are trending down.

For those who insisted we needed New York-style lockdowns in the Sunbelt states of Arizona, Texas, and Florida to fight those surges, consider this data pattern from former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson: “AZ/FL/TX: 60 million people, no lockdowns (now), 23,000 peak hospitalizations, 500ish (hopefully) peak daily deaths. New York: 20 million people, hard lockdown, 18,000 peak hospitalizations, 1000 peak daily deaths. Let’s lockdown forever!” Indeed.

Other narrative-inconvenient data patterns exist in the places that supposedly did things “right.” Japan and even Hong Kong are seeing small case spikes - but big trend changes - despite militaresque adherence to universal masking the entire duration of the pandemic. And then there’s California, land of fruits and nuts, whose governor implemented a statewide mask mandate on June 18. Two weeks later, cases were three times what they were before the mandate and have continued to roll along at around the 10,000 mark every day since. (Have you noticed that leftists who criticize surging red states for not doing “enough” mysteriously leave California out?) Globally, Brazil, India, and Mexico have all experienced significant spikes in cases case and death rates lately despite early masking requirements on significant portions of their populations. So apparently, those who told us coronavirus would be pretty much eliminated if we would just wear masks for a few weeks were either ignorant or lying or both.



All of the above, along with plenty of other data patterns I didn’t have room to mention, raise the following questions: If lockdowns are the answer, why did Georgia cases rise two months after theirs ended? Why did Sweden never get overwhelmed? If they just work while they’re being implemented, what is to stop the virus when people do come out? If masks work, why is the virus surging in places that implement and strictly enforce their use? Why are places that never masked doing fine?

These data patterns don’t suggest that COVID-19 isn’t dangerous or deadly to some people, but they do suggest that viruses are pretty good at doing what they do and there’s not a lot that humans can do – especially through lockdowns or face coverings – to stop them. Like it or not, the likely only way out is going to be some form of herd immunity. Fortunately, especially with T cells and the fact that many more have had it than the actual case count, we could be much farther along than we think.

 

[Leongsam]

thenewamerican.com

Combating Coronavirus: Sweden Shows the Way
Written by Dennis Behreandt

5-7 minutes



While the rest of the world locked down their citizens and shuttered business and industry as a result of apocalyptic — and apocalyptically incorrect — modeled scenarios of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the Nordic nation of Sweden assessed the situation with a more level-headed analysis and chose to confront the crisis without lockdowns.

For adopting this approach, the mainstream media was awash in stories about how the Swedes were surely courting a bloodbath of epic proportions. Then, when the Swedish approach began to show success when compared to other nations that locked down, mainstream-media organs continued to fret that the country would eventually experience a COVID catastrophe.

That catastrophe has not come to pass. In fact, Sweden continues to have success, demonstrating that statist lockdowns are not necessary.
Last week, the Daily Mail reports, “Sweden recorded only 1,716 new cases … down from 9,094 just a month earlier, and deaths have also been on the decline.”

Anders Tegnell, the nation’s top epidemiologist, said the the curves of cases and deaths were headed in the right direction. “The curves go down, and the curves over the seriously ill begin to be very close to zero. As a whole, it is very positive,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.

How well has Sweden weathered the coronavirus crisis? The Daily Mail notes: “Measured by cases per million people, Sweden now has a similar infection rate to the UK and a much better one than the US.”

Speaking to Freddie Sayers of UnHerd.com, Tegnell reflected on Sweden’s approach to the pandemic.

“I think to a great extent it’s been a success,” he explained. “We are now seeing rapidly falling cases, we have continuously had healthcare that has been working, there have been free beds at any given time, never any crowding in the hospitals, we have been able to keep schools open which we think is extremely important, and society fairly open — while still having social distancing in place in a way that means that the spread of the disease has been limited.”

He also noted that Sweden’s more voluntary approach seemed to work at least as well as the more totalitarian measures utilized elsewhere.

“In many ways the voluntary measures we put in place in Sweden have been just as effective as complete lockdowns in other countries,” he noted. He also pointed out the significant problems caused by lockdowns.

We know, he said, “that lockdowns also have big other effects on public health. We know that closing schools has a great effect on children’s health in the short and the long term. We know that people being out of work also produces a lot of problems in the public health area. So we also have to look at what are the negative effect of lockdowns, and that has not been done very much so far.”

Hardcore lockdowns also throw people out of work, disrupt supply chains, and destroy the economy, putting people at risk of hunger, despair, and homelessness. In the United States, as well as elsewhere, the lockdowns have caused a dramatic increase in demand for assistance from charitable food banks and have put millions out of work — and with precarious finances are making those millions face an inability to pay bills and confront the unhappy likelihood of eviction from their homes and apartments.

But Sweden seems to have avoided some of the dramatic negative economic impacts caused by lockdowns elsewhere. In fact, a report in the Financial Times excerpted by the website ZeroHedge pointed out that many Swedish companies have been reporting financial results that have exceeded analyst’s expectations.

According to FT: “Every day for the past two weeks, Swedish company after Swedish company has beaten expectations. From telecoms equipment maker Ericsson to consumer appliances manufacturer Electrolux via lender Handelsbanken and lockmaker Assa Abloy, Swedish companies have delivered profits well above what the market was expecting, even if in some cases that merely meant a less precipitous decline than analysts had feared.”
Why? According to paper: “The bumper crop begs the question of how many of the positive surprises are due to Sweden’s more controversial approach to managing coronavirus. Unlike the rest of Europe and North America, the country did not have a lockdown and kept schools and many shops and businesses open — a public health experiment that has attracted global scrutiny and drawn both praise and censure.”

The point was underscored for the Financial Times by Alrik Danielson, CEO of Swedish manufacturing company SKF.

“Keeping society open, schools open, doesn’t mean that we haven’t been hit,” Danielson told the paper. “But it does mean that we haven’t suddenly not been able to leave our homes. That has undoubtedly helped companies.”

Dissenting from the lockdown orthodoxy isn’t the only way Sweden is charting its own course. The country also is resisting the new fetish for face masks.
“With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” Tegnell said.

 

[zhihau]

Quick! Let’s make green lanes for Sweden!

 

[sweetiepie]

KNN my uncle think this only shows swedes lifes are more worthless KNN

 

[syed putra]

Its like george orwell's 1984.

 

[tobelightlight]

However, this guy disagree.

 

[syed putra]

Thousands of allied troops died for freedom during WW1, WWII.

 

[laksaboy]

However, this guy disagree.

Nathan Rich a.k.a 火锅大王... you know he's lying when his mouth moves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Rich

Rich has been living in China since 2014. Since moving to China, Rich has started a video blog with views supportive of the Chinese government, in regards to the Hong Kong protests, the China-United States Trade War and the China's handling of the coronavirus epidemic.

 

[Leongsam]

However, this guy disagree.

My opinion is that in a year's time you'll find that excess deaths were minimal. They are already below the average since early July 2020.

 

[Leongsam]

Sweden’s Actual COVID-19 Results Compared to What Modelers Predicted in April
Sweden’s top epidemiologist Anders Tegnell says a massive decline in COVID-19 cases shows "the Swedish strategy is working.” Is he right?
Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Image Credit: CNN

Jon Miltimore
Economics COVID-19 Coronavirus Sweden Anders Tegnell Spontaneous Order Lockdowns


At a press conference last week, Anders Tegnell said a massive decline in new COVID-19 cases shows Sweden’s “lighter touch” strategy is doing what it was designed to do.

“It really is yet another sign that the Swedish strategy is working,” Tegnell, Sweden’s top epidemiologist, said. “It is possible to slow contagion fast with the measures we are taking in Sweden.”

Unlike most nations in the world, Sweden avoided a hard lockdown. The nation of 10 million people instead opted for a strategy that sought to encourage social distancing through public information, cooperation, and individual responsibility. Restaurants, bars, public pools, libraries, and most schools remained open with certain capacity limits.

Sweden’s decision to forego lockdowns brought a barrage of scrutiny and criticism. Its approach was described as a “cautionary tale” by The New York Times.

But as I’ve pointed out, the criticism stemmed less from the results of Sweden’s experiment than the nature of the experiment. There are ample examples of nations (and US states) that have suffered far more from COVID-19 than Sweden even though these countries (and states) initiated hard lockdowns requiring citizens to shelter at home.

Perhaps the best way to measure the success of Sweden’s policies is to compare the outcome models predicted to the actual results.

On May 10, Dagens Nyheter—Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper—analyzed a pair of models inspired by the Imperial College of London study, which predicted as many as 40 million people could die if the coronavirus was left unchecked. The models predicted that Sweden's ICUs (intensive care units) would expire before May and nearly 100,000 people would die from COVID-19 by July.

“Our model predicts that, using median infection-fatality-rate estimates, at least 96,000 deaths would occur by 1 July without mitigation,” the authors wrote.

It’s a frightening prediction. And perhaps that was the point.

As Johan Norberg pointed out in The Spectator back in May, these models were used by critics of Sweden’s strategy to show its healthcare system would collapse if it did not “make a U-turn into lockdown” similar to the United Kingdom.

Well, we’re nearly through July. So how do the predictions stack up against the results?

Total COVID-19 deaths in Sweden stand at 5,700, nearly 90,000 less than modelers predicted. Hospitals were never overrun. Daily deaths in Sweden have slowed to a crawl. The health agency reports no new ICU admissions.

As the chart above shows, modelers weren’t just wrong. They weren’t even remotely close.

How did the experts get it so wrong? There are many reasons, of course, including the fact that COVID-19 isn’t as deadly as modelers originally feared. The simplest answer, however, is that modelers overlooked a basic reality: humans spontaneously alter their behavior during pandemics.

This should not be a surprise. Humans are intelligent, instinctive, and self-preserving creatures who will seek to avoid high-risk behavior. The natural law of spontaneous order shows that humans naturally adapt their behavior when circumstances warrant it. (In his 1988 book The Fatal Conceit, the economist F.A. Hayek described this process as “the least appreciated facet of human evolution.”)

Scientific evidence, as it relates to the current pandemic, bears out this economic idea. Research shows that in the US, workplaces and consumers changed their travel patterns before governments began issuing stay-at-home orders. In other words, without being ordered or even instructed, tens of millions of Americans were already adapting their behavior to the unknown threat of COVID-19.

A similar experience took place in Sweden, where foot traffic and train traffic were sharply reduced without draconian orders and penalties.
“We actually made a comparison to our Nordic neighbors, and the Swedish travel patterns have changed just as much as our Nordic neighbors, in spite of them having much more legal lockdowns than we have,” Tegnell said in a May interview.

The Swedish experience is important. As Phil Magness has noted at AIER, Sweden’s success suggests the presumed risks and benefits of lockdowns were largely a fiction.

“[T]he assumed benefits of a more severe lockdown policy appear to have been greatly exaggerated,” Magness wrote. “The assumed risks of the milder course adopted by the Swedish government appear to have been similarly inflated. And the overall death toll of the baseline ‘do nothing’ scenario appears to have little grounding in reality.”

One might argue that caution was warranted given the unknown threat of COVID-19. This argument is less persuasive when the costs of the lockdowns—a looming global recession, hundreds of millions of jobs lost, millions of businesses shuttered, historic social unrest, surging extreme poverty, and widespread health deterioration—are taken into account.

Fortunately, it’s not too late to learn from our mistakes. First, however, we must acknowledge them.

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[Leongsam]