Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Hur mår du

In a weak attempt to expand the language capability of my readers, “Hur mår du” is Swedish for “how are you” and in order to see how Sweden is doing, it is time for my monthly Swedish coronavirus update.

To review:

Instead of tight lockdowns, Swedish officials encouraged citizens to use common sense, work from home if possible, and not gather in crowds over 50. Primary schools … open!  bars and restaurants … open!  with people enjoying drinks and crowding streets. Their aim is to slow the pace of the virus, so as not to overwhelm the health care system.

At this point I want to emphasize that they did not close primary schools. I guess Sweden does not have a power-hungry political teachers union, and perhaps Sweden just cares more about educating its young students.

Here are a few of the latest stats from Sweden:

Total cases – 80442

Total deaths – 5743

In June when there was a significant increase in testing, there was a sharp rise in the number of cases to greater than 1000 per day on more than half of the June days. However, in July the number of new cases dropped to <500 (still increased testing) in the second half of the month, and in July the number of ICU admits and the number of deaths are way down. This seems like there could be a glitch somewhere. Why are the number of cases going up, while the deaths and ICU admits are impressively lower? 

To me there can be only two possible answers. Either the increased testing is now picking up a lot of asymptomatic individuals, or the increased testing is identifying a greater number of individuals that are in an age range that does quite well with Covid.

The  age group of 70 and above had 89% of all of the deaths in Sweden. (Yes, you heard me right!) The age group 50-70 had 9.6% of all of the deaths in Sweden. Moreover, one of the reasons for the relatively high percentage of the deaths in the 70+age group is the extremely low numbers of deaths in the <50 age group. In this younger and younger-middle age group there were only 71 deaths (1.24% of all coronavirus deaths in Sweden). Of course, all deaths are tragic, but the bottom line is that very few young people (<50 y/o) died from Covid in Sweden.

From Reuters (7/15/20):

A recent report showed that severe cases of COVID-19 were very rare among both Swedish and Finnish children aged 1 to 19, with no deaths reported. A comparison of the incidence of COVID-19 in different professions suggested no increased risk for teachers.

As other countries face renewed outbreaks, Sweden’s latest Covid-19 figures suggest it’s rapidly bringing the virus under control.

“That Sweden has come down to these levels is very promising,” state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told reporters in Stockholm on 7/28/20.

He also broached the subject of face masks, which the World Health Organization recommends people use when social distancing isn’t possible.

“With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” he said.

So in conclusion like a football team, Sweden stuck to its original game plan even though early on it appeared that the game plan was not working. However like in a football game the final score is not the score at the end of the first quarter, but at the end of the fourth quarter. In summary, Sweden’s plan amounted to social distancing andcommon sense, which California does not seem to have, especially when it comes to school children and sending them back to school for in-person learning.

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