‘Laissez-faire’ Sweden had Europe’s lowest death rate from 2020 to 2022, new analysis shows – Orange County Register

People shop without masks at a shopping center in Gothenburg, Sweden, Sunday, May 16, 2021. Shops, bars and restaurants remain open in the Nordic country despite high coronavirus infection rates. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Gore Vidal once said that “I told you so” are the four most beautiful words in the English language.

Perhaps this is why they are reluctant to share new data showing that Sweden’s much-maligned response to the pandemic was correct after all.

In case you forgot, Sweden was criticized by corporate media and US politicians for its light-touch COVID-19 response strategy. Many were squarely opposed to the Swedes, who refused to close schools, lock down businesses and beef up police to enforce the mandate.

Here is a sample heading:

• “Why Sweden’s COVID-19 response model is a disaster” (timeOctober 2020).

• “The story behind Sweden’s failure to respond to the coronavirus” (foreign policyDecember 2020).

• “Sweden continues to stay home and coronavirus deaths rise, but the real reason may be darker” (forbes2020).

• “Sweden has become a cautionary tale for the world” (new york timesJuly 2020).

• “I just returned to Sweden. I’m horrified by the coronavirus response here.”slateApril 2020).

This is just one example of the reaction to Sweden in 2020. Sweden became what it became because its 10 million people chose to continue living relatively normal lives. guardianwhich led not only the Swedes but the whole world to a “catastrophe”.

President Trump at the time also joined in the action Beat Sweden.

“Sweden is paying a price for its decision not to lock down,” the tweeter warned.

Despite the ominous rhetoric, the worst-case predictions for Sweden never came true. In fact, they weren’t even close.

As of March 2021, it has been revealed that Sweden’s mortality rate is lower than most European countries. The following year, Sweden had the lowest death rate in Europe.

By March 2023, Sweden’s excess mortality rate was the lowest in all of Europe. according to some datasets. Some were reluctant to admit that Sweden had the lowest excess mortality rate in all of Europe; new york timesThe country’s government, which had ridiculed Sweden’s pandemic strategy, acknowledged that the country’s laissez-faire approach was not the disaster many expected.

Most recently, Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg shared a statistical analysis based on government data from all European countries from January 2020 to August 2022. This study demonstrated that Sweden had the lowest age-standardized cumulative mortality rate in all of Europe over that period.

“Across Europe, Sweden has seen: [the] “This is the lowest total number of deaths during and since COVID-19,” Lomborg said. said in X (Formerly Twitter).

Across Europe, Sweden had the lowest total death toll during and since COVID-19

This data represents relative cumulative age-standardized mortality rates. This means controlling for population characteristics that cannot be changed, such as the age structure and size of different populations. pic.twitter.com/8ZobfWmIj2

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) March 4, 2024

One economic fallacy to rule them all.

Lomborg’s analysis provides further evidence that COVID-19 has been a disaster.

Some people may say this. How could I know?

I write these things not because I’m a prophet, but because I read a little history and understand basic economics.

History shows that collective responses in times of panic tend not to end well, and economist Antony Davies and political scientist James Harrigan explained why near the beginning of the pandemic.

“In times of crisis, people want someone to do something, but they don’t want to hear about tradeoffs,” the authors note. “This is a breeding ground for grandiose policies based on the mantra, ‘If only one life is saved.'”

The problem is that the trade-offs are real. In fact, economics is primarily the study of them. Choosing one thing means giving up another. Then evaluate your results based on what you gain and what you give up. This is called opportunity cost.

But for most of the pandemic, there were people who simply didn’t want to pay attention to the opportunity costs or unintended consequences of government lockdowns, and there were plenty of them.

This is the big economic mistake that Henry Hazlitt warned about decades ago.

Author Hazlitt Learn economics in one lessonargued that overlooking the secondary consequences of policy accounts for “nine-tenths” of the world’s economic errors.

“[There is] “Men have a persistent tendency to look only at the immediate effects of a policy and neglect to explore what the long-term effects of that policy might be,” he wrote.

This was literally the fatal flaw of COVID-19. The engineers did not realize that they were not saving lives, but (to paraphrase Harrigan and Davis) exchanging them.

Lockdowns have proven unscientific and ineffective at slowing the spread of coronavirus, but even if they were effective, cancer screenings would plummet and drug use would skyrocket. , learning caused serious collateral damage. lost, and global poverty exploded. Recession and unemployment soared, businesses went bankrupt, and high inflation arrived. Travel restrictions are denying infant heart surgery, youth suicides are on the rise…the list goes on and on.

The dark truth is that the lockdown was not based on science and had the rather unfortunate side effect of taking lives.

“Giant experiment”

The secondary effects of lockdowns and other non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) will cause irreparable harm to humanity and will be experienced for decades to come.