It hasn’t taken long for the Sweden haters to come out in force. The outpouring of schadenfreude at the apparent downfall of the arrogant Swedes who refused to fully shut down their economy to combat a virus that statistically (in Australia) had killed about one in every 25,000 people.
Retired British kidney specialist David Goldsmith — apparently posing as an epidemiologist — was especially critical of the Swedish response last week, claiming the Swedes were “caught up in their own bullshit”. “What was it about the Swedes that would simply mean they could sit there and expect not to have a second wave of such severity?” he asked.
The Telegraph claimed that the architect of Sweden’s lighter lockdown, Anders Tegnell, “appears to be being sidelined”, with Nicholas Aylott of Stockholm’s Södertörn University claiming that “by some counts, we’ve now got exactly the same level of spread of the virus that we had in the spring, and that’s about as clear a refutation of Tegnell’s strategy as you could wish for”.
Other critics of Sweden failed the most basic of tests. Last week Reuters claimed the country “has seen a surge in the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths in recent weeks” and “the country battles a growing second wave of a disease that has now killed more than 6000 Swedes”.
Get Crikey FREE to your inbox every weekday morning with the Crikey Worm.
The problem with that is that Sweden’s first wave led to more than 6000 deaths; its second only 600. The writer apparently forgot to check when people died.
Under Tegnell’s strategy, Sweden undertook several targeted measures — specifically banning mass gatherings (more than 50 people) and stopping senior school and university attendance.
It did, however, allow most school students to attend campus and small businesses to remain open.
Although Sweden clearly didn’t eradicate the virus with herd immunity as some had hoped, Tegnell’s critics have been very selective in choosing their comparators.
Goldsmith and Aylott both compared Sweden with Finland and Norway (two of the lowest case-and-fatality Western countries) rather than say, Goldsmith’s own UK or France.
The data seems to indicate that Sweden’s relatively non-deadly second wave has absolutely vindicated Tegnell’s approach: Sweden is again able to bend the curve without implementing a strict lockdown.
Here’s Sweden’s recent case graph:
Now let’s look at the UK, which did lock down (albeit less strictly than Victoria in its second wave). Its curve looks remarkably similar to Sweden’s:
But caseloads are for all intents and purposes a less relevant data point than fatalities.
For example, Singapore — which alongside Taiwan has been the gold standard for COVID-19 management — has reported 58,230 cases, but a mere 29 deaths.
How deadly has Sweden’s second wave been? Not very. Its seven-day rolling averages of fatalities peaked at 31 and has dropped back to 12:
Meanwhile in France, which recently did lock down during its second wave, shutting restaurants and bars but not factories and schools, has seen a far worse fatality rate than Sweden. Its rolling average exceeded 500 earlier this month (so 18 times the deaths with about seven times Sweden’s population):
Sweden had proportionally fewer deaths in its second wave than its first wave, when authorities ineptly allowed the virus to cascade through aged care homes.
By contrast, the second wave in France appears to be more deadly than its first wave in total fatalities (albeit with a far lower case fatality rate than its first wave, presumably due to far more testing).
It appears the real person most “caught up in their own bullshit” is Goldsmith.
Meanwhile Japan, which has maintained a far less strict lockdown than most, announced that more people died from suicide in October alone than died from COVID-19 in 2020.
There is no doubt that the highly infectious COVID-19 absolutely kills people (median age: 83) but so too does locking down a population and cutting off community and livelihoods.
Time will tell which strategy was right, but so far Sweden seems to be defying its critics.
Leave a comment
“Adam Schwab is a commentator, business director, and the co-founder of LuxuryEscapes.com.”
Ahh, that accounts for the anti-science rant piece this is. When your business is tourism, and you’re ruthless enough, you’d rather have more dead people than a lockdown.
Dear Sir/Madam, It is possible your comment is that Bridge Too Far.
From the beginning of all this the science or the interpretation of the science has always been ambiguous and indistinctive. Just because Goldsmith reads from the SAGE handbook does n’t justify Sweden being hung out to dry as the whipping boy of non cooperation.The globalist MSM love a whipping boy.
Just for my information, you speak about anti-science, which I take as meaning that there is no evidence to support his position his assertions are merely opinion. So what facts disproved his opinons or better still please point out the baseless opinions, or is it your opinion that someone in the travel industry could not read and decipher science.
This is an absolutely asinine comparison. Locking down a population does not kill a single person. Not a single person, at all, anywhere.
Not true as events in HK will attest (over SARS). The ventilation became contaminated.
Taken in concert it does injure economies but the virus is merely suppressed and NOT eliminated; such being almost impossible. Then there are the re-runs. Sometime into next year the penny will drop.
Can’t wait until Schwab can get back to normal business again. He can’t write, hope he’s better at his real job.
You, trying to book a holiday: I’d like to go to Vietnam.
Adam Schwab: Four tickets to Sweden.
You: There’s only two of us, and we want to go to Vietnam.
Adam: Six for Sweden, that will be $200,000.
As an aside, Vietnam has prevented inbound flights until further notice.
Two young sons of a friend have been teaching English there for 2yr+ – both made trips home to Ireland this year and were never happier than when they arrived back in Hue.
Nor safer.
I have told everyone that I know that I am in the best place and Hue is quite pleasant too.
As a further aside, it seems the Sveedes did a bit of locking down overnight…………
He writes perfectly well. His recent piece on BeforePay was excellent and clear.
He is aggressively, consistently and infuriatingly _constantly_ wrong on Covid-19 topics, and it is bewildering to me that Crikey hasn’t informed him that they will no longer publish his articles on the topic.
Yes Sweden is a basket case-an example of failure – one cannot compare a country with a population of about two Sydneys – to France 4 times its size and Taiwan and definitely not to Japan’s population [12 times the size]. David Goldsmith’s comments are spot on.
Paul, Harold and Des.
Your ad hominem attacks on the character of Adam Schwab really need to be less personal and more scientific. Perhaps if you stopped reading and cut and pasting the European and local morning broad-sheets it might help.
It is a matter of percentages and not population Desmond.
Yes, but surely population density is a major factor in the spread and control of the virus, something Schwab chooses blithely and conveniently to ignore. Sweden’s, for example, is 25.4 per sq. km; France’s is 119 – lower than Denmark’s (137)! This, in my book, makes Denmark look a whole lot better than Sweden.
Closer to home, Vietnam has had 1,358 cases and 35 deaths. It population density is 293.87 people per square kilometre but of course it’s much more in the cities. Estimated total population is over 97 million.
And Japan’s is 350 per sq km, but they’re not doing quite as well as Vietnam.
Do you recall my summary of each State of the with regard to the problem? There was little correlation as to density (eg) east coast but rather more on management conduct.
Vietnam, where I happen to be (currently on a beach on Phu Quoc Island) has very rapid reporting, testing and isolation. Weekly questionnaires were required until August.
I could not find a single sentence in this article that is valid, or not misleading, irrelevant or just wrong.
But it all comes down to this claim,
along with a chart of Swedish daily deaths showing a marked decline in the past week.
This is misleading, as explained here: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-sweden-death-reporting
The basic problem is that deaths are not reported until several days later. Sweden counts its daily deaths according to the day the death occurred, not the the day it was reported. So the graphed daily deaths for the last few days is missing the deaths that have not been reported yet, and the chart will move higher as the deaths are reported over coming days.
Adam needs to wait a week or too before drawing any inferences from the Swedish daily deaths for the past week.
Another piece of MSM dribble.
Can you point to anything factually or logically wrong, or put up some counterargument? In other words, contribute something? ‘MSM dribble’ is just vacuous.
One thing I don’t do is quote from the MSM agenda driven handbook or from embedded Industrial Health & Medical Complex “experts” who work to said agenda. See my comment to Cap’n below.
You’ve not made one substantive contribution yourself.
You have n’t been watching Cap’n. I have put up more links and presented more independent investigative research than anyone else here bar your good self. So you will excuse my chuckle.
No links or research today, Davos, old bean, as far as I can see.
It is actually the obsession with infections and not death or disability that conflates the discussion.
“Disability” is key, yet rarely factored.
The recent Lancet Psychiatric study of 10’s of 000’s of US health records, that found 20 odd% of those who had ‘survived’ the viral infection, were found 3 (IIRC) months down the track to have readily diagnosable psychiatric conditions (DSM, whatever number it’s up to) where their long run health records had shown no indication of such conditions prior to becoming infected with the virus.
Or, the study that showed (relative) young ‘uns that presented with damage to one or multiple organs months (3, again, IIRC) after being pronounced clear of infection.
The ‘productivity hit’ from this ‘novel’ virus is nowhere near understood.
Personally, I try to avoid the ‘early crow’.
Schwab should try it.