Sweden was widely criticized for not locking down their society when the COVID pandemic began, but their experiment has gone refreshingly well.
Back in March Sweden announced they would adopt a different method than the rest of the world by refusing to shut down their economy.
In an effort to achieve herd immunity Sweden didn't close their gyms, bars, and other supposedly "high risk" businesses.
So-called public health experts and media commentators were shocked by Sweden's behavior. Every really smart medical professional on earth predicted doom and gloom for Sweden.
As it turns out, Sweden is fine. In fact, one could argue based on data that they're doing better than other countries with similar lifestyles and populations. Sweden's death rate is lower than Spain, Italy, and the UK, which has about the same number of total citizens as Sweden.
We should have copied Sweden's COVID model.
In August, Sweden has registered just one death (!) with/from the coronavirus. Yes, you read that correctly. One death so far.
For the month of July, Sweden reported 226 deaths. They’ve accounted for 805 June deaths, 1646 in May, and 2572 in April. The deaths attributed to COVID-19 went from about a 50% reduction to falling off of a cliff.
The story is the same in the hospitals. COVID-19 is hardly registering as a blip on the radar. Sweden has reported just 4 new COVID-19 patients in their ICUs in August. The month of July saw only 52 COVID-19 patients in ICUs.
It doesn’t take a math whiz to come to the conclusion that the epidemic appears to have been wrapped up in Sweden for months. It’s unclear whether this is a result of having achieved the herd immunity threshold, or if the seasonality of the virus is providing indefinite relief. But it’s become absolutely clear that Sweden’s long term pandemic strategy is working.
Asserting that “there is no evidence anywhere in the world that lockdowns or masks have *stopped* the spread of the virus,” Schachtel notes how public health experts “disregarding hundreds of years of proven science on herd immunity” who mandated lockdowns are responsible for the economic catastrophe which the world will now suffer.
As Newsweek acknowledged last week, Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate is lower than those of Spain, the UK and Italy, countries which all imposed lockdowns.
Pedestrians walk down a shopping street in Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020. Photographer: Erika Gerdemark/Bloomberg via Getty Images