← Back to Topics

Sweden COVID Strategy Debate

Discussions center on evaluating Sweden's no-lockdown COVID-19 approach by comparing its per capita death rates, excess mortality, and outcomes to neighboring Nordic countries like Norway and Denmark, as well as the US, UK, and others, using data from sources like Our World in Data and Worldometers.

📉 Falling 0.1x Health
3,544
Comments
15
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#1708
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2012
3
2013
7
2014
4
2015
4
2016
4
2017
8
2018
8
2019
8
2020
2,366
2021
721
2022
238
2023
118
2024
20
2025
33
2026
2

Top Contributors

thu2111 (40) henrikschroder (33) nickthemagicman (26) tomohawk (26) acqq (23)

Keywords

e.g pubmed.ncbi US ig.ft DNK economist.com nlm.nih GDP marketwatch.com DEU sweden deaths capita death death rate norway countries rate denmark higher

Sample Comments

gus_massa • Jul 26, 2024 • View on HN

Too late to edit:And still more death per million than Sweden (2.9K vs 2.6K). https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-cases-deaths-...

wesleywt • Aug 1, 2020 • View on HN

Just for perspective Sweden has 5000 deaths, Norway 255, Denmark 615 and Finland 329. Adjusted for population, the Swedish death rate is higher than the USA. It is not a poster child for success.

roenxi • Dec 30, 2020 • View on HN

According to [0] Sweden has better deaths per capita than the US, UK, Spain and Italy. We still have no data about what the longer term effects of all these business closures will be, because the pandemic is ongoing. And at the time the decisions were made it was wishful thinking that a vaccine would be almost upon us by now.This Swedish "failure" is not yet manifest. They are an apparently weak performer, but by no means outside the pack. And the better performers in the pack are s

silent_cal • Oct 28, 2021 • View on HN

No it isn't: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden?countr...

briefcomment • Jul 14, 2020 • View on HN

Sweden's excess deaths look no worse than any other country [1].[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...

EricE • Nov 1, 2020 • View on HN

Sweden didn't lock down and if you look at the deaths per million they are the lowest in Europe.Raw infection numbers are scary, but not very telling since testing is far from universal or error free.Death stats aren't that reliable either. Covid seems to be deadly and a miracle cure at the same time - it's amazing how death rates for other maladies all seem to be dramatically down. I'm sure that is just coincidence.

lazyjones • Mar 29, 2020 • View on HN

Sweden is significantly behind Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark at deaths per 1M: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countriesThe epidemic is still growing fast though and since some countries are naturally lagging behind others, the effectiveness of measures will only be seen in the aftermath.

guygurari • Jun 4, 2020 • View on HN

If Sweden has a significantly higher percentage of the population infected (as they claim) then it doesn’t make sense to compare death rates at this point, because it may be that these other countries will reach the same numbers (infection rate and death rate) later. This is a likely outcome because Sweden’s healthcare system has not been overwhelmed, so it’s not obvious that their policies will lead to excess deaths in the long run. The thing to compare is the final death toll (as well as econo

bazzert • Nov 12, 2020 • View on HN

right, looks like Sweden is doing pretty well compared to the USA.https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-

orangecat • Apr 21, 2020 • View on HN

Sweden has about the same per-capita death rate as the US and Switzerland, and lower than the UK, Spain, and Belgium. (See https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/). It's certainly possible that they'd be doing better with more restrictions, but if their strategy is as disastrous as many people seem to think then they'd be at the top of the charts,