When Sweden announced it was going for herd immunity the rest of the world gasped. Privately, we all thought their government was mad. They should be in panic like the rest of us—shutting everything down and keeping everyone safe from the deadly virus. Covid-19 is a pandemic the WHO told us. Millions are going to die they said.
Yet Sweden with a population of 10 million, chose a different path. It kept its industry going, its restaurants and schools open. It was business as usual as we can see from the image below. No masks, no social distancing and nothing closed down.
As expected Covid cases initially skyrocketed and then fell away. In all 79,000 Swedes were eventually infected with Covid. A total of 5,667 Swedes died. From today’s graph below you can see the deaths have been decreasing since April 2020 where it peaked, to today where NO deaths were recorded.
(So much for millions of deaths.)
Most of the people who died were over 65 years in age, but then again over 26 percent of Sweden’s population is also over 65. So it was only a very small proportion of that population as well.
Each year over 6,000 people also die of respiratory illnesses in Sweden. Covid to date, has yet to surpass last year’s respiratory illnesses tally.
Covid infection is decreasing. Today recorded just 132 new cases with all of Sweden’s business as usual approach, schools, churches, events and restaurants open, no masks and no social distancing.
In contrast, Australia only recorded 100 deaths in our first wave, but to do that had to put everyone into house arrest. We destroyed our commercial sector that will put millions on the dole by Christmas and created a Government debt that our children will still be paying off. Today’s social media claims that the national suicide rate is now outstripping the Covid mortality rate. This is all because of the government mandated house arrest of the Australian population
Was it all worth it, we must ask? It seems our Government has made a big mistake listening to the WHO and China. The virus is dying in Sweden with only 20% of the people needing to gain herd immunity. Plus their business sector is still intact. China never got to make that killing on Sweden’s commercial sector like it has in the rest of the world. Sweden looks in great shape and has made a liar out of the WHO.
A report from research firm Capital Economics published Tuesday shows that the Swedish economy is the least negatively impacted in Europe, and is the “best of a bad bunch.” Although Sweden was not immune to the virus’ economic impact, it was the only major economy to grow in the first quarter of the year, the report noted. (1)
All of this is worth contemplating as Victoria—the pariah state of Australia— goes into mandatory wearing of masks and continuing house arrest due to a second wave of covid.
