Right. All. Along.
Sweden Now Has a Lower COVID-19 Death Rate Than the US. Here’s Why It Matters
Sweden's "lighter touch" COVID-19 strategy looks stronger with every passing week.
Friday, September 4, 2020
Politics Sweden COVID-19 Coronavirus Lockdowns Unintended Consequences F.A. Hayek The Fatal Conceit
For months, Sweden was the punching bag of the world’s media and politicians.
For foregoing a lockdown, Sweden was declared a “cautionary tale” by The New York Times.
“Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown,” President Trump tweeted.
“They are leading us to catastrophe,” said The Guardian in March, quoting a virus immunology researcher.
Experts and media around the world all seemed to agree, with a few notable exceptions, that lockdowns were the sound approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s been much less talk about Sweden of late. The reason, it would seem, is that Sweden’s strategy appears to have tamed the virus. While countries around the world are experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19 outbreaks, Sweden’s COVID-19 deaths have slowed to a crawl.
As a result, many nations are catching up to Sweden in per capita deaths, and some are passing it. Italy recently popped back ahead of Sweden. Chile passed the Swedes next. Then came Brazil, which surpassed Sweden in per capita deaths on Wednesday.
Finally, on Thursday, the United States joined the group. The United States currently has 578 COVID-19 deaths per million compared to Sweden’s 577 per million, according to the global statistics web site Worldometers.
More nations are likely to follow in the weeks and months ahead.
Meanwhile, the man behind Sweden's herd immunity strategy, Johan Giesecke, just got by promoted by the World Health Organization.
The Lockdown Lesson
State-enforced lockdowns have ravaged economies and humans alike. Stay-at-home orders caused a massive decline in economic output and caused serious disruptions to the global supply chain. Tens of millions of jobs were lost, millions of businesses were shuttered, and extreme global poverty increased for the first time in more than two decades. Meanwhile, countries witnessed surges in drug overdoses, suicide, domestic violence, and depression.
For months, media, policy experts, and politicians claimed that these unintended consequences were necessary collateral damage in the war against COVID-19 (when they acknowledged them at all).
“Scientists say lockdowns have likely prevented hundreds of millions of infections around the world,” CNN reported in June. “A modeling study published in the scientific journal Nature last month estimated that by early April, shutdown policies saved 285 million people in China from getting infected, 49 million in Italy and 60 million in the US.”
Professor Solomon Hsiang, the director of the Global Policy Laboratory at Berkeley, called lockdowns one of the greatest endeavors ever taken by humans.
"I don't think any human endeavor has ever saved so many lives in such a short period of time,” said Hsiang. “There have been huge personal costs to staying home and canceling events, but the data show that each day made a profound difference.”
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