Sweden don't have huge numbers of Covid infections? Not on the face of it perhaps but infection rates per million are worth bearing in mind. Sweden's infection rate per million currently stands at 107,652 whereas the UK's infection rate per million is significantly lower at 79,608.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
As you suggest, Sweden's demographics in terms of population, density, age and underlying health conditions are different to our own. With that in mind I'd suggest that if the UK had adopted Sweden's approach we'd have been up a smelly brown creek without a paddle.
Interesting in regards to Sweden from early 2020 when numbers were very high worldwide, even compared to similarly densely populated areas there doesn’t seem to be much of an impact from non pharmaceutical interventions that were desired.
Taken from a blog/article but quite interesting in regards to the comparison between Stockholm and London which can be more fairly compared due to demographic factors and density etc.
“As of May 6, Sweden’s Covid-death toll stands at 2,941 – a per-capita count of 29 per 100,000 people; in America it’s about 22 per 100,000 people. The UK’s number, now the highest in Europe, is well above that at 39 dead per 100,000. How can we make sense of this?
To some extent we would expect Sweden, whose population density is one-tenth that of Britain, to fare better against a contagious disease that spreads by proximity. But though the countries as a whole may differ, their capital cities are altogether more comparable – Stockholm has a population density of 5,203/km2, while London’s is 5,701/km2.
Stockholm, however, accounts for a much greater proportion of Sweden’s outbreak than London, with 37% of positive tests and more than half of the country’s deaths. Similarly, New York City accounts for 30% of America’s Covid deaths – almost half if we count its metropolitan statistical area. In contrast, London only has 20% of the UK’s total number of deaths so far.
Stockholm has seen 65 people per 100,000 die from the epidemic, compared to 59 in London and a staggering 225 in New York City (162 in the greater NYC statistical area). Clearly, coronavirus deaths are much more spread out in the UK, with Scotland reporting something like 51 dead per 100,000 people, the East, the Midlands and the North West all around the national average of 39 per 100,000.
In America and Sweden, however, the pandemic has been mild or totally unremarkable in most places. The Swedish region where my family lives, Skåne, has had just six deaths per 100,000 people, lower even than locked-down Denmark or Germany. The same is true for many other parts of Sweden – particularly the very sparsely populated north.
Similarly, the US state of Wyoming, with a population 600,000, has reported just seven Covid deaths; Maine, with roughly the same population as my home region of Skåne, has seen 62 deaths – about 5 per 100,000 inhabitants. To a lesser extent this is also true in some parts of Britain: As of May 5, the South West, where 8% of the UK’s population lives, had reported fewer than 4% of its deaths.
These statistics go some way to explaining why Sweden has opted for a more open approach, as have American states with low population densities. It there is at least one thing this crisis has unambiguously taught us, it is that one size does not fit all. New York’s outbreak is not Wyoming’s and advice appropriate for London is not necessarily right for the Peak District, let alone the Scottish borders or rural Wales. So far, the pandemic has mostly been a story of Big City life and it is not clear that that’s about to change. We should talk about London, New York City or Stockholm – not Britain, America or Sweden.â€
https://capx.co/in-a-big-city-pandemic-comparing-countries-has-limited-value/From looking at Sweden previously it would appear they got the trade off correct for them in terms of measures etc. Looking at the comparison between Stockholm and London and with knowledge of the damage the restrictions will do in terms of missed treatments/operations and general healthcare, it would appear that the implementation of non pharmaceutical interventions haven’t been as effective as initially hoped
Preliminary data from EU statistics agency Eurostat compiled by Reuters showed Sweden had 7.7% more deaths in 2020 than its average for the preceding four years. Countries that opted for several periods of strict lockdowns, such as Spain and Belgium, had so-called excess mortality of 18.1% and 16.2% respectively.â€
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2BG1R9“According to the John Hopkins mortality analyses Sweden’s deaths per 100k stands at 141.42 as opposed to the UK’s 191.69â€
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
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