Is the Swedish Model of Herd Immunity for the Covid-19 Virus a Better Way in the Long Run?

This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Brian Coughlan, lives in Sweden



Sweden used to be the suicide “capital” of the world. For a while we were the rape “capital” and now of course we are the Covid-19 death “capital”.

Sweden has never actually been any of those things. We simply have officials that are good at their jobs, who can count (and they count everything) and who are free to tell the truth without political interference.

It’s funny in a way. Sweden carefully produces detailed and comprehensive statistics and people in countries that will never know how many of their citizens have been raped, or committed suicide or died of Covid-19 beat us with our own statistics!! Our politicians hate that! Luckily, we have those politically independent ministries.

Though we do now see a dawning realization in parts of Europe and the US that Covid-19 is killing thousands of elderly people in old age homes. Well, no shit Sherlock.

Sweden has been counting these deaths (they represent about 50% of the total) since the end of February and trying to deal with the problem Since the middle of March. I attach the chart for daily deaths. This was updated at 14:00 on the 20th of April. Notice the pattern?




As you can see, that's falling. Our hospitals have never been overwhelmed, there are no mass graves, we don’t have millions of unemployed (although unemployment is predicted to be 13% next year) and we can keep doing what we have been doing for years.

As noted, we have been counting deaths in nursing homes since the beginning — that’s why the demographic of deaths looks like this:




Furthermore, it's a myth that we are doing nothing (I've been laid off with 92,5% of my income for 4 weeks already and that may last as long as 10), secondary schools and universities are using remote learning and we don’t use cash anymore. Well, okay, that last part we’ve been doing for years. The key point is the strategy is designed for the long haul, it is science based and led by the State Epidemiologist and the heads of various ministries such as Health, Welfare and Disaster preparedness. Every day at 14:00 CET these guys - none of whom are politicians - update the country on the state of the pandemic. Then they answer questions from the press about the policies, the numbers and so forth.



Other than the occasional “finest hour” speech, we hear very little from our politicians.

Oh, and we are not pursuing herd immunity. It may emerge before a vaccine as a side effect of the policies, but it’s not a goal.

Notwithstanding the cherry picked charts you see and the breathless hysteria you hear, we are doing better than many countries and 70% of Sweden, including the 2nd and 3rd largest population centers, are as good as anywhere in the world with the exception of South Korea.



As the rest of the world starts to count all the deaths and roll back their lock downs - ironically approaching the Swedish model as implemented from day one - deaths in these countries will climb.

In the end the total number of deaths will be similar per capita, but Sweden will have preserved thousands of small business and the livelihoods of millions of their citizens. Because, science.

People pointing to Sweden and claiming we’ve “lost” have misunderstood the race they are running. This is a marathon, not a 100 meter sprint.

Let’s talk again in 3 months.
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Edit, 22nd of April.

Only had to wait 3 days. Sweden, the only country counting all its deaths.



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Edit, 25th of April.
Posts of updated charts from FOHM website which an be found here :Experience




Deaths are up substantially since I last posted and rather than a decline, this now looks more like a plateau of about 100 deaths a day. Note that the last week of data is always unreliable and will back-fill significantly. Per capita this is now at the top of the mid-range of European deaths, although as noted in the edit on the 22nd, Sweden is one of very few countries keeping an accurate “score” in this grim “game”.




Distribution of deaths remains overwhelmingly among the elderly with about 1,900 of the total 2,200 deaths in this category.




Intensive care usage is flat and something like 20% of capacity (more than doubled since the start of March) remains.



The most worrying development is that things are finally starting to move in Sweden’s 2nd largest region with deaths doubling from 80 to 160 in about a week. Thankfully, the 3rd largest region still looks fairly flat. These statistics can be found here: The spread of the new coronavirus.

So far, after 2 months since the proper start of things, Sweden remains just about in control of the outbreak.

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