What is this obsession with limiting comparison of Sweden with "other scandanavian countries"? Is there some sort of special risk factor that only applies to scandanavia? Does COVID know what people look like? Why not compare stats of major metro areas with other similar metro areas in the world?
Yeah and avoiding looking at the statistics for mortality to see if it's actually higher than usual, which it isn't. I looked at the statistics of mortality for sweden, 2020 was high but well within standard deviation, and there were several more deadly years in recent history, 2008 and much more deadly years in the 1990s, without this ever even making headlines.
What stood out the most in the statistics, actually, was that 2019 had an unusually low death rates, if you add up 2020 and 2019 they basically even out to an average death rate.
I bet mortality has been abnormally low during 2021 so now we have a bunch of dry tinder again which will cause another "crisis" and lockdown as soon as weather is cold and viruses making the rounds again. Never ending cycle of panicking when old people die.
Because the density of the metro areas are similar. Stockholm is not comparable to Paris or London when it comes to density for instance.
Culture is also very similar between Scandinavian countries and much different from western Europe, with people much more isolated (which is tough to adjust to for immigrants there actually).
Sweden has much higher ethnic & cultural diversity than Norway & Finland, and hence more people passing through it's borders potentially bringing in new infections from abroad. It also has fewer hospital beds per population, and higher population density.
All these factors and more need to be taken into account when doing country comparisons. We won't really know how much effect the difference in policies had until someone has done a proper causal analysis using some regression model or other econometric technique.
Because they have similar risk factors, which are much, much lower than the other countries people are noting Sweden appeared to have fared better than. The UK, which imported a lot more cases, has more crowded commuter trains and bars and probably a less sensible population tried the Swedish strategy for a few weeks, but gave up because the deaths were mounting.
It's always cherry picking to deliberately misinterpret statistics to make the most dramatic headline, it has been during the whole pandemic. Nobody is even trying to make accurate and relevant conclusions with the numbers, quite the opposite it's like a sport now who can lie the most with statistics.
For the same reason that their vaccination rates and wealth and gini coefficients and all types of other metrics closely resemble each other more than some random country like Ethiopia or Peru.
We’re talking about Germany and France. Right across the water. Sweden had lower deaths in earlier years than their neighboring countries and this was a reversion to the mean. Speaking as a Norwegian people in this country like to look smart but they’re not getting the last laugh this time.
