Sweden versus the World

Sweden is unique in that they were one of the few countries in the Western World that did not shut down to try to contain the coronavirus. Let’s briefly take a look and see how that worked:

Country…Population…Cases…..Deaths….Infection Rate…Death Rate…Morality Rate

Sweden….10.3………….90,923…….5,880…..0.0088…………..0.00057…………6.5%

Denmark….5.8………….13,627……….270…..0.0023…………..0.00005…………2.0%

Norway……5.4………….26,637……….649…..0.0048…………..0.00012…………2.4%

.

U.S………328.2………7,081,505…204,527….0.0216…………..0.00062………….2.9%

UK………..67.9…………431,824…..42,060…..0.0064…………..0.00062………….9.7%

Italy………60.3………….308,104….35,818…..0.0051…………..0.00059………..11.6%

 

This data is from the Johns Hopkins website as of 9:23 AM. Population is in millions and is the 2020 estimates.

A few observations:

  1. Sweden’s mortality rate is a more than 10 times higher then Denmark, which did do a strict lockdown.
  2. Note that the U.S., UK and Italy have a higher mortality rate even though Sweden has not done a lockdown.
    1. The U.S. mortality rate is the highest of any developed nation in the world.
  3. The differences in mortality rates is certainly strongly influenced by the amount of testing done. The high mortality rate of Italy, UK and Sweden is certainly because of less extensive testing or failure to test.
    1. The real mortality rate is probably between 0.5% and 2%.
  4. Of course, there is no way of knowing how accurate are each of these statistics. For example, who is counted as killed by the disease does vary from country to country (for example: Germany versus Belgium).
  5. I have no way of easily comparing the economic impact of the various policies.
  6. One could postulate that If Sweden has Denmark’s mortality rate, it would have over 5,000 less deaths.
  7. One could postulate that if the United States had Denmark’s mortality rate, it would have almost 190,000 less deaths.
    1. Keep in mind these numbers are particularly fuzzy due to different reporting standards and definitions.

The picture is of a Grenadier of the Swedish Royal Guard. Sweden has not been in a war since 1815.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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One comment

  1. I have seen some articles in foreign media on the Swedish response to the Corona virus. It often seems that journalists don’t have a good understanding of the Swedish strategy to cope with the virus.

    While Sweden did not do a complete lock-down, activity in the society was seriously curtailed. For example, universities and upper secondary schools ceased doing campus education and switched to online teaching. All people that could work at home was instructed to do so. Public gatherings exceeding 50 people were banned. All sports events were halted. And so forth.
    When such measures were in place, there was a drastic change in what people did. Social contacts were, as a consequence, vastly reduced.

    I would say that those measures were effective. However, they were introduced too late, in late March. By then, the virus seems to have already spread widely. Further more, there was a lack of stockpiled protective equipment and other things needed in case of an epidemic, which has caused many unnecessary deaths. Indeed, at least three investigations had already identified this shortcoming, but no action was taken to address the problem.

    In Sweden, any person who has been diagnosed with the virus and died, is registered as a Corona death. Recently, there was a study made in one Swedish region, which scrutinized all the Corona deaths. It was found that in only about on case of six was the virus the direct cause of the death. In many cases, it probably hastened the passing away of a seriously ill person. I would not like to play down the seriousness of those cases, but it illustrates that it is not easy to draw a borderline between deaths caused by the virus and other causes.

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