May 14, 2021, from Deborah

Response to an April 19, 2021 Lancet article: The Swedish Covid19 Strategy Revisited.

Our numbers are continuing downward - yippee!....those reckless Swedes are going to be ramping down all restrictions beginning June 1st and are forecasting “a return to normal” by September (defined as an infection rate of less than 50 per 100,000). No "zero covid" nonsense for us - we’ve been told we’ll have to live with it.

This, from the Lancet piece, made me laugh: "they would revisit and change the national strategy that they had designed so that it would be more aligned with global best practice, and that the political decision makers would act on it. They did not.” Oh boo hoo. Fyi, the Public Health Authority has had consistently high ratings from Swedes throughout the pandemic.

The comparisons with Finland and Norway get a little tired. We have said from the beginning you should compare Sweden with Belgium or the Netherlands, in terms of population density (we have 3 large cities for goodness sakes, unlike Finland and Norway which have one), flow of people (Stockholm is a large international hub), immigration and other variables. When someone trots out this data, I know they aren’t very serious.

Regarding GDP - we are an export-driven economy, we are not only susceptible to our own economic troubles but those of other countries, so I don’t know exactly what we are supposed to divine from this number. Also important to remind people that our excess mortality has been *below normal* since February - citing deaths without this context is also misleading.

My 2 cents worth! :-)

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