[StopDisinfo910]

I seem to remember that Sweden applied the WHO recommendations as they were written and didn’t lock down because the damage of locking down is huge and everybody dog pilled on them about how it was stupid.

Turn out their excess mortality was quickly better than the other Nordic countries and their economy and mental health did better if I remember correctly.

People should complain more about the lockdowns. Most of them were extremely poorly implemented and stupidly managed.

[op00to]

You remember incorrectly.

Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020—Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society largely open. The results weren’t subtle. As the Juul paper puts it: “That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively.” Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/

[StopDisinfo910]

You are only looking at 2020 and posting a source from 2021. Now look at 2021, 2022 and 2023. That’s the whole point. Sweden had slightly more excess mortality the first year especially amongst the elderly but they ended up doing similar or slightly better than their neighbours if you look at the whole pandemic.

They did significantly better on other metrics however like youth mental health and education.

I posted a ton of sources in another comment.

It’s not that surprising anyway. It’s not like Sweden did a weird and surprising experiment. They just stuck to the already existing plans designed to contain influenza while everyone else freaked out after Imperial College published their dubious models and started acting irrationally.

[op00to]

That’s not what the Nordic data show. Sweden didn’t “end up doing better.” It had by far the worst COVID-19 mortality in 2020, because it kept society open while its neighbors used strict controls.

The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.

[StopDisinfo910]

> That’s not what the Nordic data show. Sweden didn’t “end up doing better.” It had by far the worst COVID-19 mortality in 2020, because it kept society open while its neighbors used strict controls.

> The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.

Exactly, that's exactly what I said and what the data show. We do agree except obviously there is absolutely nothing artificial about it. You can't discount the data because you don't like what it shows.

So, indeed, what the data show is that other countries barely postponned death despite Sweden having a dry tinder effect in 2020 - plenty of people vulnerable to respiratory diseases - following two years of mild flu. Sweden has indeed less excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 and tellingly the overall number is in every way comparable when it's not slightly better than the other Nordic countries. Sweden early losses in 2020 weren't even that large by the way.

To which I reach the inevitable conclusion, lockdowns were entirely useless, massive distruption of society - disproportionately impacting the youngest with schools closure - to gain mere weeks of life for the most vulnerables. Focusing on shielding the most vulnerables and putting in place containment habits were totally adequate counter measures. Once again, this is not in any way surprising, these were the WHO recommendations for containing an influenza pandemic.

[StopDisinfo910]

To the people downvoting me, you are welcome to actually look at the numbers. [1]

Feel free to read about what it shows about lockdowns. [2] [3] [4]

I understand that the US has somehow turned this topic into a political debate and people hate facing that they might have been wrong but I am thankfully not from this part of the world and the evidence is not in favour of lockdowns ever being such a good idea. If you read the BBC article, you will see that we have reached such a polarised and abusive moment in time that even some experts are scared commenting on the available data.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929?log...

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7

[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12611

[4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-th...

[GOD_Over_Djinn]

When I was younger, I thought of dems as the party of logic and reason, and repubs as bible-thumpers. I don’t think this was entirely wrong, but the unthinking dogmatism of left-leaning people about lockdowns did a lot to disabuse me of that notion.