More data vindicate Sweden’s hands-off pandemic approach
Brad Polumbo
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The New York Times famously decried Sweden’s hands-off approach to the pandemic as “the world’s cautionary tale.” But more data just vindicated the Scandinavian nation’s approach, which kept schools open and largely rejected government lockdowns of the economy.
To compare how different countries with different policies fared, we must look at more than just COVID-19 deaths — because policymaking is inherently about trade-offs. While the actual efficacy of coronavirus lockdowns is dubious at best, they were at least intended to reduce deaths from COVID-19. Yet honest commentators and policymakers alike always acknowledged they would have other, possibly life-threatening consequences.
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We’ve seen those play out in everything from record levels of drug overdoses to surges in domestic violence to delayed cancer screenings and more. So, in order to evaluate whether embracing lockdowns made a country overall better off, we have to look at deaths overall, not just COVID-19 deaths.
When we do this, Sweden comes out looking fantastic. New data analysis from the Spectator’s Michael Simmons examined “excess death” data, which showed how many more people overall died than the projected “normal” baseline over a given time period.
“That data is now coming through,” Simmons wrote. “Using the most common methodology, Sweden is at the bottom — below Australia and New Zealand, which had plenty of lockdowns but very few Covid deaths.”
That’s right: Depending on which exact dataset you look at, Sweden ranks bottom or close to the bottom for overall excess deaths. This sure seems to vindicate the hands-off approach its policymakers took — and were absolutely excoriated over.
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It really does seem that the country had things right from the beginning.
The architect of Sweden’s light-touch approach, Anders Tegnell, has become such a polarizing figure that he’s had to live with police protection. But he stands by the approach he recommended.
“We did a good job,” he said last month. “You can’t just have a narrow virus perspective. You have to understand how a society works.”
Sweden still took COVID-19 seriously and encouraged people to behave responsibly. Officials encouraged adults, and especially the elderly, to take the COVID-19 vaccine and saw very high rates of uptake, yet it did not push it on young children, except those with unique risk factors. The country did have some government interventions, such as travel restrictions, in place, but by and large, it took a much more restrained approach. And as a result, its citizens were left freer yet saw fewer deaths overall.
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You’d think this would prompt a reckoning among those who pushed lockdowns — and disparaged those who didn’t comply as engaging in “human sacrifice.” But many elite policymakers, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, still won’t admit that the approach they advocated was a mistake. In fact, Fauci has even said the government should’ve taken more extreme measures earlier.
That’s a serious cause for concern because another pandemic could happen in our lifetimes. And if it does, we need our leaders to have learned from past mistakes. Yet all signs suggest that, if anything, they’re only going to repeat their failed, authoritarian approach.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and the co-founder of BASEDPolitics.