T. Belman. This is a very fair and informative article.
By John McCormack, NATIONAL REVIEW
Not so hot.. When Sweden’s government took a more lax approach than other western countries to fighting the coronavirus — it banned events with more than 50 people and shuttered secondary schools and universities but imposed few other restrictions — it was operating on the theory that stricter lockdowns couldn’t do much to save any lives in the long run. The Swedish society and economy would ultimately benefit, the thinking went, by reaching herd immunity more quickly than other countries that locked down.
“About 30 percent of people in Stockholm have reached a level of immunity,” Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter, the Swedish ambassador to the United States, told NPR on April 26. “We could reach herd immunity in the capital as early as next month.”
The extent and duration of immunity that antibodies provide remains unknown, but even if herd immunity is possible, a new study testing for coronavirus antibodies shows Sweden may still be “a long way off” from reaching it, according to one Swedish epidemiologist.
Reuters reported on May 20 that 7.3 percent of Stockholm residents tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in late April — far below the 30 percent cited by the Swedish ambassador on April 26. (To put these numbers in perspective, studies in the United States found that about 6 percent of Miami-Dade County residents and about 21 percent of New York City residents tested positive in late April for coronavirus antibody, and the United States itself remains a long way off from herd immunity.)
The Swedish government’s chief epidemiologist now estimates that closer to 20 percent of Stockholm residents have antibodies, but given how Swedish officials wildly overstated the numbers a month ago, that estimate should be taken with a grain of salt. Some experts in Sweden think the country is far from achieving herd immunity.
“I think herd immunity is a long way off, if we ever reach it,” Bjorn Olsen, professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, told Reuters.
At present, Sweden’s coronavirus death toll, adjusted for national population, is much higher than that of its Scandinavian neighbors. According to the Worldometers website, Sweden’s death rate per capita is four times that of Denmark, seven times that of Finland, and nine times that of Norway. Sweden’s per capita death toll is 33 percent higher than the United States’.
As for Sweden’s economy? “Economists at Swedish bank SEB estimate Sweden’s GDP will drop 6.5 per cent this year, about the same as the US and Germany, but a little better than Norway and ahead of 9–10 per cent falls in Finland and Denmark, all of which have had lockdowns,” the Financial Times reported May 10. A Reuters poll from April found economists predicting the Scandinavian economies would all fare about the same in 2020.
Was the Swedish approach a mistake? It’s still too early to make a final judgment. These are just economic forecasts and predictions, and there remain many unknowns. Could Sweden’s economy bounce back sooner than those of its neighbors? Will the death tolls in Scandinavian countries ultimately look the same? Perhaps, if there isn’t an effective vaccine or treatment developed in the next year.
But there was good news on the vaccine front this week, as Moderna announced promising results in a preliminary round of testing.
Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb cautioned during an appearance Sunday on Face the Nation that “when you try to scale up and get volume, a lot of things can go wrong, a lot of things can be delayed. It’s very hard to get to the point where you’re manufacturing at high, high quantities.”
“I would say that’s probably more likely a 2021 event that we’re going to have a vaccine available in sufficient quantities to mass inoculate the population,” Gottlieb added. At the same time, he thinks the prospects are good that we could have a vaccine to “ring fence an outbreak” in a city if there is a second wave this fall. The number of lives ultimately saved by a vaccine or treatment would depend on what percentage of the population has already been infected by the time a vaccine or an effective antiviral drug hits the market.
So there remain many unknowns about treatments, vaccines, and the economy. It will take some time to have a full understanding of how the Swedish model fares compared to other western countries. But at the moment, with so little apparent economic benefit and a much higher death toll per capita than its Scandinavian neighbors, it isn’t looking so hot.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
The dems are making room for illegals by eliminating elderly people (at the end of life) and promoting abortions (at the beginning of life)!
Nobody knows!
This virus behave unorthodoxically!
Two independent research centers (Fr. & India) detected “segments” foreign to this type of virus!
Actually, contrary to the impression created by their own official government spokesman, the Swedish death rate and new infection rate have been declining since around April 15. But the decline is not as steep as elswhere in Western Europe and in the United States. In addition, in spite of the gradual decline in critical cases, they still have very few unused hospital beds and only a handful of unused ICU units. This shows how unprepared they were for the CoVid-2 crisis, and how grossly inadequate and underequipped their healthcare system was even before the CV-2 crisis struck.
Their government’s disease-control spokesman has dounplayed and even denied the gradual decrease in new cases. He appears to be worried that if he is honest about the fact that the situation has slowly begun to improve, the people will become careless about following the government’s recommendations, the case load will increase again, and the hospitals will be overwhelmed again.
One truly amazing fact is that they had a higher life expectancy in Sweden than in the United States, at any rate before this year, in spite of their appallingly bad healthcare system. Of course, the U.S. healthcare system is not all that great either, at least not in New York City and some other urban centers.
Another amazing fact is that there has been little sign of public discontent in Sweden with their government ,despite this appalling situation. The press has been mainly supportive of the government’s handling of the crisis. According to polls, their chief infectious-disease-control bureaucrat is the most popular man in the country! That apparently is because he gives daily press conferences about the crisis that everyone watches on television, even though he never has any good news to report.
Even the opposition parties have been only mildly critical of the government’s handling of the crisis. Their internal politics is extremely polite, in contrast to British , American, and most other democracy’s domestic politics.
One problem with democracies is that the government is never any better than the people want it to be. If the people are satisfied with a government that doesn’t care about the well-being of the elderly and sick, they have no one but themselves to blame.
@ maria: Maria, this is a sincere not a rhetorical question. It sounds to me like you have some personal experience with the health situation there. Do you live in Sweden, or have you visited the country recently? Everything you say tallies with what I have read. But it would be nice to receive some confirmation from someone who has actually lived through the Swedish mess.
Sweden is lost and their info is fake. There is chaos in Sweden they have no medicines and they have not enough doctors and nurses to cope with the virus.
They have no beds in the hospitals at least in the big city where there are most cases.
In the hospitals patients who broke legs are together with patients who have corona.
In nursing homes old people are necglected (maybe only mohamedans are treated). Most of the patients get morphin and alcohol and no healthy food or respirators if necessary. Beware of Swedish health care
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Sweden’s approach is not nearly as lenient as most people think. There have been strict controls on travel outside one’s home area. The freeways have been closed except for delivery of essential goods. Only in the last few days have the controls on internal travel been made more lenient to allow people to drive “one to two hours” from their homes. Travel to and from foreign countries has been completely banned since March.
The decision to allow most bars and restaurants to remain open has had little to do with Sweden’s high death rate. The primary source of the large number of deaths has been the rigorous practice of “triage,” meaning that people over 70 have been mainly denied hospital care and admission to ICUs. People in this age bracket have constituted about 90 percent of all people who have died of what is suspected to be coronavirus, but only about 50 percent of those admitted to hospitals, and only 5 percent of those admitted to ICU units. About half of all deaths have occurred in nursing homes, although only about 2-3 per cent of the Swedish population lives in them.
Very few tests for the presence of the virus have been conducted. Government policy has been to test only “essential care workers” such as doctors, nurses and police. It is very difficult for members of the general public to be tested.
Nursing home employees were not given hand sanitizers, masks, gloves or gowns until quite late in the crisis. They received no training in how to treat patients with symptoms of the illness. They were not tested for infections. They were required to stay home if they got sick, but were free to return as soon as they “felt better.” On the other hand, all visits by family and friends to nursing home patients were strictly forbidden until very recently. This meant that their relatives were not allowed to see how they were being treated.
The longstanding difficulties in getting ambulences to transport people to hospitals has continued. Again, the rigorous practice of “triage,” which long predates the coronavirus epidemic, is the reason for this.
When the crisis began, there was a severe shortage of hospital beds and an even greater shortage of ICUs, which was one reason for the rigorous imposition of “triage” on patients. No additional field hospitals were set up during the epidemic, as was done in many other countries.
Norway, which had a much lower death rate than Sweden, conducted very widespread testing. So did Taiwan, which has had an extremely low death rate only five dead in all, and no new cases for several weeks.
Taiwan, like Sweden, has had no lockdown of bars, restaurants. movie threaters, and othe rbusinesses. On the other hand, those who test positive have been required to go into isolation in government-run hotels, while being paid a small stipend and provided with food, medicines and other essential supplies. Norway has also required the isolation of people who test positive.
Sweden has had no such policy of isolating the sick. Doctors and nurses have been required to keep working even if they test positive, on the grounds that there are not enough of them to keep hospitals and clinics running if they are allowed to rest.
The main reason for Sweden’s high death rate is that they were completely unprpared for an epidemic, and have had a severely underfunded and understaffed healthcare system for years.