The idea of letting the Coronavirus run through a population, while minimizing shutdowns in order to achieve “herd immunity,” is a popular hope of many, who want us to get back to business as usual.
Sweden is often held up as the model country that has proven herd immunity works.
Well, there’s that belief and then there are the facts.
Fact check: Sweden has not achieved herd immunity, is not proof that lockdowns are useless
CURRENT COVID-19 SITUATION IN SWEDEN
With the highest daily average reported on Nov. 12, COVID-19 infections in Sweden are currently at 99% of the peak, with an average of 4,625 new infections reported each day. At the time of this article’s publication, there have been 257,934 infections and 6,891 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began (here). The Scandinavian county had 10,352,390 inhabitants as of mid-2020 (here).
According to mortality analyses from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (here), the case fatality rate in Sweden is 2.6% -- higher than that of neighboring Finland (1.6%), Norway (0.9%) and Denmark (1.0%), as well as the United States (2.0%). As a country, Sweden has had 66.76 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 7.23 in Finland, 6.28 in Norway, 14.59 in Denmark, and 82.72 in the United States.
As shown here by Our World in Data, a scientific publication run by Oxford University researchers, Sweden’s daily COVID-19 deaths per million increased by 1,200% between Aug. 1 and Dec. 1.
As a result of the herd immunity not working in Sweden, frontline healthcare workers are quitting, due to being stressed out.
Sweden's frontline health care workers are quitting in worrying numbers as COVID cases spike
Source: Fortune
BY
NICLAS ROLANDER AND BLOOMBERG
December 13, 2020 3:05 AM PST
Sweden faces a shortage of health-care workers as the number of resignations ticks up after a relentless year of caring for Covid patients.
Sineva Ribeiro, the chairwoman of the Swedish Association of Health Professionals, says the situation is “terrible.”
Even before the first wave of the pandemic back in March, there was “a shortage of specialist nurses, including at ICUs,” she said in a phone interview.
The development shows that even countries with universal health-care systems are now struggling to keep up with the Covid crisis. This week, Stockholm’s intensive care capacity hit 99%, sending the city into a panic and prompting calls for outside help.
But even if more ICU beds are provided, the bigger concern now is whether Sweden has enough health-care workers with the skills needed to look after the country’s sickest patients.
Sweden’s Top Epidemiologist Says Herd Immunity Is a Mystery
“It’s obvious that it does slow down transmission, but it’s been difficult to understand how large that effect is and how it should be weighed against other factors that speed up transmission,” Tegnell said. That “balance may have been different than I and many others believed.”
Sweden has made international headlines for avoiding a lockdown since the pandemic hit, relying mostly on voluntary measures to achieve social distancing. It’s a strategy that’s coincided with a death rate that’s multiples of that recorded elsewhere in the Nordic region, and the government has recently acknowledged stricter curbs are needed.
What Bloomberg Economics Says…
“The second wave of Covid-19 started later in Sweden and the number of new cases is still rising, according to data released on Dec. 1. By contrast, the infection rate seems to be receding in other parts of Europe. A continued increase in new hospital admissions and a rise in mortality from Covid-19 also show the pandemic has tightened its grip in Sweden.”
So, same as it ever was: Stay home if you can. Wear a mask. Keep your distance.