How did Sweden fare during the pandemic? Back then, the world was shocked by our openness. New York Times called us a “cautionary tale”, Trump said “Sweden is suffering very greatly”. But we never heard how it all turned out.
Now I’ve looked: Sweden did better than others. 🧵
Sweden had no orders to stay at home and no mask mandates. Schools, offices, factories, restaurants, libraries, shopping centers, gyms and hairdressers stayed open. Our Social Democratic Prime Minister said that individual responsibility was preferable to government control.
As expected, the economy benefited. The world economy was 2.9% smaller late 2021 than it would be according to forecasts before the pandemic; the Eurozone 2.1% smaller, and the U.S. 1.2% smaller.
The Swedish economy was 0.4 percent BIGGER than forecast before the pandemic.
School kids also benefited. The U.S. Department of Education concludes that half of America’s students began 2023 a full year behind grade level in at least one subject. In sharp contrast, Swedish elementary schoolers suffered no learning loss during the pandemic.
Did these gains come at the expense of health? Surprisingly, no. Sweden was an outlier in terms of policy, but not in terms of Covid-19 mortality, and only suffered 7% of the deaths predicted by the kind of models that scared other countries into lockdowns.
However, counting COVID-19 deaths is tricky, since countries have different definitions. That is why we were told to wait for data on “excess deaths” – mortality compared to a previous period or expected value. Now we have this data, and this is where it gets really interesting:
Sweden’s excess death rate during the three pandemic years, 2020–2022, compared to the previous three years, was 4.4%. Remarkably, it is the lowest excess mortality rate of all European countries, including our Scandinavian neighbors.
There are different ways of adjusting for age and previous trends, and according to some methods, Denmark beats Sweden to first place, but all methods show that Sweden had one of the lowest rates.
America’s excess death rate was more than twice as high as Sweden’s.
Swedes turn out to have adapted their behaviors to the pandemic, but voluntarily.
It suggests that it was not Sweden, but the lockdown countries that engaged in a reckless experiment, depriving millions of liberties without a discernible benefit to public health.
I have just published a Cato Policy Analysis paper about these little-known findings, “Sweden during the Pandemic: Pariah or Paragon?”
A brief guide to the Swedish election today 🇸🇪 In the last polls, it’s 49.7% – 49.3% and anything can happen after an election campaign which has mostly focused on crime and electricity prices, and has neglected economics and visions. A 🧵
One reason that it’s close is that the Social Democratic government gained popularity after the pandemic and Ukraine war. It supported Ukraine and applied for Nato membership, and had a famously relaxed pandemic response (in Sweden only the far right wanted lockdowns). /2
As a classical liberal, you tend to vote for the Moderates (liberal conservative), Liberals (social liberal) or Center party (liberal + farm subsidies). But this time, they are on different sides, since M wants to form a government with the help of the Sweden Democrats. /3
Oxfam published a new report today, ahead of the Davos meeting, as usual blaming poverty and hunger on “neoliberalism”, inequality and billionaire wealth. Here is what’s wrong with it. 🧵 oxfam.org/en/research/pr…
Interestingly, Oxfam wrote a similar report ahead of Davos 2012. They said we would see millions more in poverty in the 2010s unless we regulated markets and reduced inequality. Now they say we failed to reduce inequality. But you know what they forget to mention? /2
Extreme poverty declined by an average of 71,450 people EVERY DAY 2011-2021, according to World Bank data, despite the pandemic uptick. Mostly in countries that got more billionaires. So why is inequality still the problem? /3
The four archetypal ways to face electoral defeat with dignity:
1) “The people have spoken, the bastards.”
– Dick Tuck after losing the 1966 California State Senate election.
2) Supporter: “Governor, every thinking person will be voting for you”.
Adlai Stevenson: “Madam, that is not enough. I need a majority.”
3) “If I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents ’interests’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
– Barry Goldwater
Four must-see charts in the debate about COVID-19 modelling. Sweden's Dagens Nyheter looked at influential predictions on patients in intensive care (and the outcome) in the country without lockdown. The highest curve is for present Swedish strategy:
Michael Ryan, World Health Organization, evaluating the Swedish model:
1) “I think there's a perception out there that Sweden has not put in place control measures and has just allowed the disease to spread. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
2) “Sweden has put in place a very strong public health policy around physical distancing… What it has done differently is that it has very much relied on its relationship with its citizenry and the ability and will to implement social distancing and self-regulate.”
3) “They've ramped up their capacity to do intensive care quite significantly and their health system has always remained within its capacity to respond to the number of cases that they've been experiencing.”
Five facts about East and West Germany on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall: 1) Before the war, the East was richer. In 1989, East Germany’s per capita income was less than half of West Germany’s.
2) The wall did not just divide Germany. It also divided the car manufacturer Auto Union. In the West it developed Audi. In the East it came up with the Trabant.
3) In 1985 two psychologists did an observational study. East Germans smiled a third as often as Westerners, and their demeanor revealed many more signs of depression. nyuscholars.nyu.edu/en/publication…