Thread by @bopanc

The Swedish #Covid-19 experiment is over. After a severe second #coronavirus wave - which authorities said won’t happen - the government imposed some mandatory restrictions to curb hospitalisations and deaths. My report via ⁦@WSJ⁩ wsj.com/articles/long-…

After a surge in Covid-19 infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, Sweden has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures alone @WSJ wsj.com/articles/long-…

With to­tal Covid-19-re­lated deaths reach­ing al­most 700 per mil­lion in­hab­i­tants, in­fec­tions grow­ing ex­po­nen-tially and hos­pi­tal wards fill­ing up, the gov­ern­ment had to shift wsj.com/articles/long-…

Last week Swe­den’s to­tal coro­n­avirus death count crossed 7,000. Neigh­bor­ing Den­mark, Fin­land and Nor­way, all sim­i­lar-sized coun­tries, have recorded since the start of the pan­demic 878, 415 and 354 deaths re­spec­tively wsj.com/articles/long-…

Teg­nell said lock­downs were unsustainable and un­nec­es­sary, dis­cour­aging mask-wear­ing as the Eu­ropean Cen­ter for Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol, a #EU agency whose head­quar­ters are lo­cated near his office, rec­om­mends wear­ing them wsj.com/articles/long-…

Teg­nell pre­dicted that Swedes would grad­u­ally build im­mu­nity to the virus through con­trolled ex­po­sure, that vac­cines would take longer than ex­pected to de­velop, and that death rates across the West would con­verge. wsj.com/articles/long-…

In­stead, a coro­n­avirus vac­cine was au­tho­rized last week, Swe­den’s death rate re­mains an out­lier among its neigh­bors, and Teg­nell ac­knowl­edged in late No­vember that the new surge in in­fec­tions showed there was “no sign” of herd im­mu­nity wsj.com/articles/long-…

Swe­den’s lais­sez-faire pan­demic strat­egy has failed to de­liver the eco­nomic ben­e­fits its pro­po­nents had pre­dicted. In the first half of the year, GDP fell by 8.5% and un­em­ploy­ment is pro­jected to rise to nearly 10% in the be­gin­ning of 2021 wsj.com/articles/long-…

Despite the lack of lockdown, Sweden’s economic performance has not been better than that if it’s neighbors wsj.com/articles/long-…

Anders Tegnell, the face of Sweden’s pandemic management, remains hugely popular, despite his wrong predictions & opposition to masks. People have tattooed his visage, made it into Christmas decorations, and baked life-sized gingerbread cakes in his image wsj.com/articles/long-…

😷 Despite the high infection and mortality rates, Sweden is refusing to mandate masks. EU’s, @ECDC_EU (based in Stockholm!) is recommending masks, as do the @CDCgov in the US, the @WHO and Sweden’s own @vetenskapsakad that awards the Nobel Prize wsj.com/articles/long-…

Attention has been focused on Sweden, but its Nordic neighbors, Norway and Finland in particular, have had much greater success while enjoying near-equal freedoms, with bars/restos open etc. One major difference: they have much stricter border controls.
wsj.com/articles/long-…

“Au­thor­i­ties chose a strat­egy to­tally dif­fer­ent to the rest of Eu­rope, and be­cause of it the coun­try has suf­fered a lot in the first wave,”-Piotr Nowak of Karolin­ska Hos­pi­tal. “We have no idea how they failed to pre­dict the sec­ond wave.” wsj.com/articles/long-…

“We don’t like to say that Swe­den has been the black sheep, but it has been the dif­fer­ent sheep,” wsj.com/articles/long-…

Sweden registered more Covid-19 deaths last week than Norway has had during the whole pandemic (there is quite a lag in reporting coronavirus deaths in Sweden)

https://twitter.com/emanuelkarlsten/status/1335890177106079744?s=20

In Sweden, like in other places, Covid-19 deaths are reported with a lag. This is a good analysis: adamaltmejd.se/covid/?fbclid=…

From the Swedish statistics agency: "Between 1 January and 31 August, there were nearly 6,500 more deaths than in the same period in 2019, which is 4,800 more deaths than expected based on the latest population projection for 2020." scb.se/en/About-us/ne…