It is unbelievable how often Sweden still shows up in conversations. It did not impose tough shutdowns, did not keep elementary schools and core businesses functioning, issued clear guidelines, and relied on voluntary social distancing and personal hygiene routines to deal with the crisis. In order for hard shutdowns to be justified elsewhere, Sweden had to be discredited. Hence the harsh criticism of Sweden’s approach last year New York Times, Newsweek, USA today, CBS News and others.

But with Sweden’s demonstrable success, the goalposts have been moved. Whenever it is mentioned as the opposite of Europe’s high Covid tariff closure countries, the answer is now: ‘But their Nordic neighbors did much better. Look at Denmark ”. Let us “interrogate” this argument.

First, the situation in another country is irrelevant in assessing the usefulness of modeled forecasts on which the shutdowns were based. On March 16, 2020, the Neil Ferguson model from Imperial College London (ICL), by now well-deservedly infamous, triggered locks with gloomy predictions of 510.00 British and 1.2 million American deaths in an unabated spread of the virus. The second sentence of the summary boasted with its epidemiological modeling “has informed the politics of Britain and other countries”. In an article in Nature in June last year, the team claimed that locks had “averted 3.1 million deaths” in eleven European countries on May 4, 2020.

Researchers at Uppsala University adapted the ICL model and estimated on April 30 that Sweden’s Covid deaths would reach 96,000 by the end of May without limitation. The actual number on June 1 was only 4,403. Asked about the difference between Matt Ridley and the House of Lords on June 2, Ferguson insisted: “they did not use our model, they did not adapt our model” and “We had no role in parameterizing. the”. The ICL itself tweeted sniffingly on May 6, “Professor Ferguson and the Imperial Covid-19 response team never estimated 40,000 or 100,000 Swedish deaths”. This was a sincere terminological inaccuracy. For the ICL team did a follow-up analysis (Report # 12, March 26, 2020) that included forecasts for all countries in an Excel sheet as an appendix. For Sweden, they predicted 30,400-42,500 deaths with social distancing, and 66,000-90,000 without limitation. Although not specified, Phillip Magness draws a well-founded conclusion for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) in mid-June 2020 as a time frame. The actual figure was 5,370 on July 1, 2020.

Now back to the Nordics. Sweden’s mortality is really three times as great as in Denmark. But Denmark, in turn, is three times the size of Norway and five times taller than Iceland. Lockdowns can not be the explanation for Denmark’s better performance than Sweden’s in light of its own identical difference with Norway and even greater difference with Iceland. In addition, as shown in no less than 35 studies collected by AEIR, globally and among US states Covid mortality is policy variable, there is no correlation between key Covid measures and jurisdictions with severe and soft, mandatory and voluntary restrictions and guidance for social distancing . The clear logical conclusion is that variations are due to factors other than lockdown, such as Iceland being an isolated island country – a bit like Australia and New Zealand, when you think about it. Danish and American researchers list 16 different factors (including lighter locks) as possible explanations for Sweden’s lower fees among the Nordic countries. Not everyone is equally weighted, but they are “thoughtful”: average age for Covid deaths, comorbidities, obesity levels, urbanization, immigrant populations, cramped working and living conditions, nursing homes for the elderly (Sweden’s nursing home population is 50 percent larger than Denmark’s), mobility of care staff across facilities , hospital capacity and medicine stocks, climate, seasonal variations, vitamin D deficiency, etc.

For example, in some countries, including the United Kingdom, the virus spread rapidly when holidaymakers returned from alpine ski resorts believed to be super-spreaders. It turned out that the other Scandinavian countries’ midwinter holidays in 2020 were a week earlier than Stockholm’s, before the virus exploded in the towns. Gothenburg and Malmö were also one to two weeks earlier and again the same difference in Covid measurements can be seen between them and Stockholm. The epidemic was also far advanced in Sweden when the other Nordic countries locked up. Swedes travel internationally in higher numbers than their neighbors. In the same way, Sweden had a comparatively milder flu season in 2019, with 2.5 percent lower deaths than the five-year average. Denmark and Finland had 1 percent higher mortality and Norway about the same. This made more Swedes vulnerable as “dry peaks” in 2020. Despite this, Sweden’s slightly higher age-adjusted mortality in 2020 returned it to the same level as in 2015 and was lower than most European countries. Not catastrophic. Together, 2019 and 2020 placed Sweden in the middle of the Scandinavian flock with deaths, and she has tracked below her average for 2015-19 since February 7 (-2 percent on May 16 compared to Denmark’s +2 percent).

“What about other Nordic countries” is an attempt to deviate from the embarrassment over the failed catastrophe if Sweden did not get stuck. The undeniable reality is that Sweden is in the middle of the European group, currently ranked 24th in Covid mortality per capita, with the top three in Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Czech Republic (once “hailed as among Europe’s most successful in tackling the pandemic “, wrote guard) double its course and in order Belgium, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Spain, France and Portugal higher than Sweden. With increasing frequency, Florida and Texas are added to Sweden as examples of cases of Covid infection, hospital stays and mortality curves without wild shutdowns. Early international border closures, before the virus was sown in society (they have little beneficial effect after the virus has taken root, as demonstrated by Noah Carl for Canada, Hungary, Argentina and Colombia), and soft social distancing and personal hygiene routines based on voluntary guidance, are the most cost-effective and least custodial measures.

The Swedish example teaches us four important lessons. First, be open and transparent, not dogmatic and authoritarian. Second, provide clear guidance to the people, including the limits of scientific security and the “known unknowns,” as Donald Rumsfeld said. Third, humility when it comes to acknowledging mistakes, such as not protecting Sweden’s residents in nursing homes, maintains public confidence better than Victoria-style debt shift. Finally, transfer responsibility for risk assessment and management back to “us humans”: we are best placed to make informed choices that directly affect our lives and livelihoods today and in the future.