| > in terms of excess deaths all Nordic countries look identical Finland, notably, doesn't even count covid deaths outside hospitals according to the THL, so comparing Swedish and Finnish covid stats is a bit silly Where did you get those numbers from? EUROMOMO doesn't include data from Iceland, but for the rest it's obvious that Sweden is an outlier in regards to the overall mortality rate:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country Denmark, Finland and Norway are below the normal mortality rates for 65+ since the lockdowns began. Sweden is clearly above. I assume there's not another epidemic over there that we've missed? Again, I'm not saying the Swedish strategy is wrong, I'm just saying that the failure to protect the elderly has invalidated Sweden as a data point. There has definitely been a bunch of deaths related to COVID-19 in Finnish retirement homes, but in terms of overall mortality rates for people 65+ it's quite obvious that it's not a big problem. Actual COVID-19 diagnoses are still reported by THL, including everyone who gets diagnosed by the public health system in Finland. Finland has unrelated, considerable, issues with care for the elderly, but that's a completely different topic. :) > Let's not forget that lockdowns were a knee-jerk reaction enacted by scared politicians, not a carefully considered and data-backed policy. Definitely. Lock-downs are last-resort measures taken when you've already failed to do what you should have done in the first place; extensive testing of travellers and contact tracing/quarantine of people who are sick. The other Nordic countries failed miserably in that regard. |
It's so "obvious" that Sweden is an outlier that people don't bother to look at the data more seriously. Sweden didn't lock down ergo it must be a disaster, the data be damned.
> in terms of overall mortality rates for people 65+ it's quite obvious that it's not a big problem
That's correct. The overal mortality of all Nordic countries is completely unexceptional. Politicians panicked because they believed that this disease would be very deadly (it isn't), kills healthy young people (it doesn't), spreads exponentially (it never has), and spreads through asymptomatic hosts (it doesn't).