as long as all countries have different testing and death reporting policies it seems completely pointless to compare numbers ...

You can’t compare pears with apples. Every country has different ways of counting persons affected of coronavirus. So when you compare Sweden with Norway for example, then you have to know that we are not counting affected persons in the same way.

Oh dear.... I first thought you were not serious, but when I realised you were... Dear sir. I don't know where to start with this video. - Firstly, we are NOT doing an experiment. We are following all avaiĺable scince regarding epimemiology and pandemics. Anders Tegnell has personal experience from this, spend some time and read his CV... Thank GOD you confess to not being a statistician or an epidemioligist. Even if Sweden and Norway are geographically close, it is very hard to make comparisons due to fundamental differences in how the communities are organised and how we behave. Nursing homes are for example not organised and managed the same way. Deaths in nursing homes are not reported in the same way. In Sweden all deceased with a covid infection are reported. In Norway, only the ones where covid is the confirmed cause of death, are reported. Also, Sweden do no broad testing. Only the patients who actually contact healthcare and have suspicious symptoms are tested. This makes your comparison of mortality rate dramatically inaccurate. First case as the starting point is not a good meassure. Case 100 is much better. A very important fact is that the bulk of the initial infections came from the alps from after the Swedish winter holidays. Stockholm had their week off at the worst possible time. Gothenburg and Malmo had their week earlier and did not get hit at all as hard. Infection curves are different for many reasons, and the first case recorded makes no sense. You are also doing fundamental mistakes; unimployment rates are NOT based on the total population of countries; it is the rate compared to the working force: 7,4 % is 330 000 people not 700 000 people !! Currently, studies conducted both in sweden and in the US show that for each confirmed case, there are in the vicinity 800-900 individuals infected with mild symptoms. Today, there are in access of 11% of the total population of Stockholm confirmed to have had the infection through conducted antibody testing. Beginning of May, this number will be 30%. The Stockholm healthcare system is having a tough time, but they are managing. For the rest of the country, there has been lots of time to prepare and the infection curves are not at all dramatic. You say you have a Swedish friend. Please spend some time watching this video to get some sort of insight in the Swedish society and behaviour. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f9V3o5ynzMurgpc.html Also, there is the World Value Survey, providing some insight in how different values of contries and societies differ and relate to each other. Map of the World Values: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d6iHjLKU19ubmqc.html Website: www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSNewsShowMore.jsp?evYEAR=2019&evMONTH=-1 Kind regards!

sweden is the only country to respond and not react to "the virus" with a wholistic, balanced, sane, approach, not just health vs economy but mental health, social anxiety , fear, isolation blah blah

Big problem in Sweden is the low level of testing. Therefore case rate is most likely higher in reality. For example compare my country, Ireland. It has done 95k tests for 5m, Sweden 70k for 10m. Case rate understated.

Working is relative to whatever it is that you are trying to achieve. I've seen a lot of interviews by Swedish citizens they are in agreement with the current response and value quality of life. So from their perspective, it's working. One 73 year old man continues to golf with his friends, he said he can die for any reason at any time, if it's this, so be it. Seems to be the general attitude there and I think it's a great way to live. No one is stressed. People are going to die, it sucks, but that's how nature works. You do your best to help but you don't ruin the lives of others in the meantime. How many suicides will come from this? How many will lose everything? Probably not many in Sweden. Could be possible that they end up with a million asymptomatic cases and herd immunity. The Swedes are good with the situation, why is anyone else in their business? I wish I was in Sweden, their attitude is as healthy as it gets, stop being so concerned with death and live life like your last moment is now, it very well could be.

There is absolutely no way in hell that Sweden has 12000 cases. More like 500000 up to 1 million... All of your data assumptions are wrong! Sweden is far ahead of the curve than any other country!

Sweden tests half as much as Denmark, and one third of Norway per capita. This impacts their case rate. This impacts their Death rate. Try to count only the final death/capita. The case numbers are very subjective due to different testing policies of each country.

Since there are no worldwide standard for testing for covid-19, or determining if a particular fatality is due to covid-19, you are most likely comparing apples to oranges. Those statistics are almost useless outside their context.

Maybe in Sweden there are more people being exposed to low levels of the virus and are developing immunity from low level asymptomatic cases. Then, the next time they come in contact with the virus they only get mild illness because they already had prior exposure and a few memory antibodies and the case would be less survere.

Sweden is pretty socially isolating normally (Sweden Freeze). But, you said it yourself, Sweden expects people to accept their social responsibility. The US is incapable of that. While we might have a large group of very socially responsible, ethical, and empathetic people, we also have large groups of seriously arrogant and entitled people who aren't interested in anyone else but themselves and what's in it for them. So, they tend to have a nationalism that is people centric, we have a nationalism that is very self/ego centric.

Greetings from Finland. You have forget one very important factor: how many tests are taken. Policy is very different in every country. Sweden high death rate implies that they do not test much. Probably When you get tested you are already badly sick. There are much more infected people then tested. This Numbers is assumed to be 10 or even 30 times more than actually tested people in Finland. They have done antibodies testing in Stockholm and 11 percent had some antibodies. However, I won’t believe their approach is working. Herd immunity in May? No way, not happening.

Surely the supposed low infection rate in Sweden is due to low testing levels though ??? Presumably their high death rate (leaving aside nursing home spread) is in part due to a general higher infection level throughout the population??.. Here are some figures below re testing per million population anywag Figures from Worldometer 15,000 tests per million :Denmark 25,000 tests per million :Norway 7,387 test per million. :Sweden

One thing that is big in Sweden and actually helpful to the situation are supermarket delivery systems. We have several services of which you can order products you’d find in supermarkets. Food, bathroom products, even over the counter meds. All can be delivered to your doorstep and that is a huge difference to what I know from my time back in Germany, where you’d need to go to a supermarket to get food. And as every needs to go there, you cannot avoid contact to the outside world there as you can in Sweden.

In comparison: Singapore has 6 mio inhabitants and a very low number of cases and very low mortality but:... they closed their borders very early, they test permanently, everybody is wearing masks, social distancing is law, schools are closed. Thailand has 68 mio inhabitants, Bangkok 8 mio (almost like Sweden or Belgium), there again: borders were closed very early, everybody is wearing masks enforced by strict laws, social distancing by law, free alcohol gel and temperature measuring when you enter public transport, supermarket or a 7/11. Curfew and checkpoints at al roads between the borders of their 72 (!) provinces. Result: 1400 covid-19 documented cases and 40 deaths. My opinion: in South East Asia they have experienced local epidemics before and they know how to act immediately with an efficient response. In the EU and the US they didn’t and Ím afraid they still are not. Fighting a viral pandemic is not something you do leaving it up to the individual to decide how to react (wearing masks, using protective materials as nurses, allowing family to visit 85 year olds in care facilities etc.) Sorry for my long text but I really think that we should take South East Asian countries as an example of how to act.

Swede here, yep it's working well. Social distancing is fairly easy to do here. Sooner or later we all get this unless we get vaccines, the primary goal is to not overwhelm the hospitals and get a low rate of spread. The high death rate is largely due to statistical phenomenas. We dont have widespread testing so there is plenty of skew in there.... we basically only test those we have very good reasons to suspect have the virus. But we have more large scale testing on the way to get a grip on the actual spread, and thus get a grip on the problem and how many have developed some sort of immunity.

I don´t know if you have taken into account that Sweden also report deaths outside hospitals. Very few Countries do that. Almost 40% of the fatality numbers here are from nursery-homes, and homes, rather than hospitals. If you look at Norway, they only report deaths within hospitals. That beeing said, yes, we die more here than other Scandinavian Countries, but what will happen when Denmark, Norway and Finland open up frpm lock-downs now? Another wawe? It´s waaaay to early to say if "our" way is a better one than for example Norway. That will take years to gather information about that.

Higher death rate without overwhelmed hospitals = insufficient testing

Currently Sweden"s death rate per 1million is higher than the US. The US is currently 105 and Sweden is 139. I'm not sure what you can make of their strategy at this point as there are so many variables. If you look at their neighbors (Norway is 29, Finland 15, Netherlands 202, Estonia 29). At the end of the day isn't or shouldn't it be about how many people survive the pandemic.

Thanks for this analysis. Just on one of your points about the virus being democratic and everyone being equal. That's not exactly true as there are places in the world where people live in slum conditions where 15 people might live in a small make shift house with no ability to practice isolation or social distancing even if they wanted to. I suppose we will never see the true statistics from places like these.

Deaths /1M population: Sweden 132, Denmark 55, Norway 28, Iceland 23, Finland 14. The case rate depends on the extent of testing; tests /1M: Sweden 7,387, Denmark 14,223, Norway 24,664, Iceland 111.955, Finland 8,970. The number of undiagnosed cases could be 2x or 3x higher than their nominal case rate. I was born in Sweden and I love the place, but I'm concerned for my relatives there and surprised that the usually rational and humane Swedes are taking this cavalier approach.

I can see why Sweden is against social distancing. If I lived in a country with hot blonde girls like Sweden, I wouldn't want to social distance either.

Take note that you don't hear of any statistical increases in deaths of market workers and medical workers, who are not social distancing. If social distancing was really working you would expect to hear about huge surges in deaths from these workers, but that's not the case.

Sweden has a marginally higher urban density than UK , has less deaths per million and less cases per million than UK ( as of 24-04-2020 ). In addition , Sweden counts care home deaths where as UK does not. You can call Sweden an experiment if you wish but I would say that its policy is a good thing as it may show that a less stringent lock-down makes sense.

As Sweden only tests admitted patients and high-risk groups the "Death Rate" estimate calculated from the testing data is ridiculously biased. Extrapolating from that variable is absolutely pointless. You can demonstrate the bias easily by instead using the testing data to estimate the "Total Cases" variable: 10086703 people * (14385 positives - 1540deaths)/(74 600 tests - 1540 deaths) ~= 1773388 non-lethal cases in the population! . (Yes, testing in Sweden is quite abysmal.) Using that value the "Death Rate" estimate shrinks to 1540/(1773388+1540) ~= 0.087%. This exercise is just to show we aren't dealing with anything close to a representative sample in the testing. The true value as of today is in between the 0.087% and 10.63% figures. Based on most statistical modeling of likely infected combined with the fact that the total number of deaths in Sweden, as of April 9th (next report should be out April 20), didn't indicate the presence of unrecorded deaths as the excess deaths matched the Covid-19 deaths very closely, I dare go one step further. The true death rate is probably closer to the lower number, even using a log-10 scale.

Really interesting debate. Unfortunately most Western advanced countries where slow react. In some ways I admire Sweden just trying something different, but case fatality is to be of a problem. For me the best approach has been South Korea which acted with so much speed. Tested who they needed to Test. Really efficient contact tracing Not locking down there whole economy but areas that they needed to lock down they did. Also Taiwan have done a very good job as well.

Even more important is that even death count is so different... its not possible to compare death tolls. UK and Italy and several other countries do not count deaths in nursing homes. Sweden do.

The best Country to respond to this virus is TAIWAN!!! They're doing everything right, even donating masks. Wow! I truly admire them. Good for that COUNTRY. I'm even watching Taiwanese baseball!

So far so good, no more killed then by traffic and smoking. And it’s no experiment, anything we do must be based on science, not on guessing and conjecture...

Herd immunity makes sense if 85% who get the virus wont get very ill. It must happen anyway. Nobody can wait a year or two for a vaccine. That's not realistic. Theres very effective treatments that work very quickly and effectively curing BEFORE the need for ventilators. Much better way to go about things

Since you do not know how many people in a population have been or are infected, you can't know the "death rate." If more people have it, then death rate will be much lower, so we need to determine how many actually have antibodies. To do that, you need good representative sample, then test. That will give you your actual death rate.

If you speak with people in Sweden people are working from home, only primary schools, grocery stores and essential small shops open. It's not really herd immunity now. perhaps it was a month ago. I don't see how they are going to achieve herd immunity by May.

India’s approach to COVID-2019 uptill ?

When you double the population, the rates will stay the same. The total infected and total deaths would double, if there were a linear relationship, but the rate stays the same. Pretty big oversight in presenting the analysis.

I am Swedish and my grandmother told me that the mothers in Sweden put babies outside in sub zero temperature and wrap up well and they are very healthy children. You can see that today when the mothers sit in the coffee shop and the babies happily breathing clean cold air.

Brilliant Video! We are grateful for your perception.

Think we can only get a good estimate of success/failure after all this is over. After we need to compare countries TOTAL death rate/year from lets say 2017. Or maybe a year is not enough. Depending on when all countries are back to normal we need to look at the whole lenght of every countris death/quarantien time as well. Will be very interesting to see EDIT: Will be fun to see if the total death/year is any different from another year, 2017 for example.

The death rates are different for many reasons. You have to understand that working with elderly here is a low status/wage job and does not require any higher education. This is a problem that is not as evident in normal times since the impact of lesser skilled workers. Also the elderly homes often have hundreds of elderly in the same home, compare to other nordic countries that are commonly a lot smaller.

Good day sir. Excellent discussions. My interest in this is partly as an observer and in a former life I was an analyst at Health Canada. In Canada, we have a full lockdown in all our provinces. We have seen the UK experience of not doing this in a timely manner and have learned some useful lessons. That having been said, however, I think Sweden and other countries that may use pseudo-herd immunity strategy could greatly benefit by the expanded use of convalescent serum therapy. This would enable them to allow a significant portion of the population to become infected and then recover while at the same time, ensuring deaths are low by using antibodies to force-multiply the immune systems of the most vulnerable. The one key problem, however, is being able to produce sufficient quantities of this serum. Are you aware of any efforts around the globe to dramatically expand - via some advanced laboratory techniques etc- the quantities of convalescent serum that either can be produced from a sample, or to make such a sample more productive inproviding immunity to a greater number of persons in need ? Thanks.

I also want to see if Sweden's way will work. Let's come back and see some updates in two weeks' time.

I don't understand how would you lockdown a nursinghome?

Sweden is more highly evolved!

Can we discuss about Telemedicine / Tele icu and it’s feasibility in the current situation Or critical care management in ICU ( especially ventilatory management) and in general how many people come out of vent especially in well advanced CENTRE like Italy . Or you can give a review on gattinoni a paper on L and H phenotype which is bit difficult to digest . Thanks a lot . Be safe

Let’s review Sweden 6 or 12 months from now. Sweden will have equal, if not better numbers than other countries, without destroying 30-40% of their economy. In addition, You are looking at every data as if they were absolute universal truths that will not change over time. If case rate is low in Sweden why would death rate be 2-5 times higher than other countries, especially given their excellent health care system. In addition, a lockdown will not improve their death rate. The reason why their death rate is so high is because the have not tested broad enough. You can expect their case rate to be 40-80X higher because the have not tested a broader representative population sample.

I would like to quote and re-iterate two points made earlier by Sweden's Dr. Kadir, which seemed to me to be glaringly obvious omissions in your video: 1) "the statistics in Sweden are skewed to have a higher mortality rate because we only test people who are admitted into the hospital or high risk patients. We dont test people with mild to medium symptoms." 2)" Everybody who has a positive PCR test and die gets counted to the death toll. So for example: If someone gets posivite PCR test and then dies from a myocardial infarction it will still count as a COVID-19 death." This kind of counting artificially elevates the death rate, and creates Panic. I think, if your are presenting a statistical discussion, these topics should have been included in your video.

very difficult to make this sort of comparison, first because you are looking at a data frozen in time and trend is important in the case of NPI usage. We know that the infection rate rises really quick and takes a long time to slow down, hence, might be that this picture is very different in a week. Secondly is how the data is collected and what is considered "infected" as testing is not done is a same way all around. I guess the best thermometer is the change in the overall number of deaths among countries, We need to mind that if the health system colapse the number of deaths will rise substabcially AND we need also mind that those 20% contains people From all adult ages if you believe in only vertical lock down approach.

The "social distancing built into the culture" statement sounds familiar. In Seattle, with a culture that is still somewhat affected by Scandinavian culture, we joke that we've been practicing social distancing for decades. :) (It's called the 'Seattle Freeze'.) We just need to work a bit more on the physical dimension of that. There are some dense parts of Seattle but nothing like New York, and for most of the people here it's still fairly easy to go out and avoid coming close to other people. Some people aren't taking it quite as seriously, prompting the city to close parks on the weekends to avoid crowds there. But we've been able to avoid overcrowded hospitals here.

Different testing rates are a factor to be taken into account when comparing death rates. Also, in a population of 10m, if the unemployment rate is 7% it does not mean 700,000 are unemployed as it is the % of the working population and excludes those who cannot work for reasons such as age. Sweden's jobless rate fell to 7.1 percent in March 2020 from 7.7 percent in the same month of the previous year, as the number of unemployed declined by 35 thousand to 389 thousand.

As a clarification, I would like to say that Sweden is one of if not THE most precise when it comes to counting the number of deaths linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. it's difficult for bigger countries to count death that didn't take place in the hospitals, something that Sweden does very well. The death rate in those bigger countries and also in some Scandinavian ones is most likely much higher than the statistics can provide. In addition, the patients are also examined in Sweden so that the cause of death can be clarified. Whit that being said, Swedens approach is much more fitted for a long term altercation, their daily life doesn't change that much which makes their strategy better in the long term. IF a second wave comes, Sweden can stay fairly stable without drastic changes to the system. On the other hand, in countries that have a full lockdown, nobody is immune to a second wave which can potentially result in a second MUCH Larger outbreak with fare mot deaths than in this one, also nither the economy or the people will be all that happy if a second lockdown is enforced a few months from now. just imagine, finally being free just to do it all together again, I think there's a limit to how much people are willing to comply, but only the future can tell. Nice video though !!! :)

Taiwan for the win! I think its because of testing, masks, social distancing and the fact that Taiwan saw what was going on in China back in December/January and closed off their flights from there. They're smart cookies, so to speak.

Swedish official death rate is over 10 % so far. The German,Swiss,Austrian Taiwanese, Neuseeland etc. Is under 5% so they do something right.

Dr, the death rate in Sweden is high compared to its neighbors yes, now that the neighboring countries are opening up they may reach same death rate roughly in the end. Plus countries like Norway isn't counting all deaths due to Covid-19 for ex. the ones that died in care homes.

Maybe there is no much difference because all the countries started the lockdown too late

Huge props to Sweden for refusing to buy into the hype. This Panicdemic and the worlds response to it will go down as the greatest folly in human history.

We always owe you a BIG THANK and appreciatian

I'm surprised that Switzerland is not being observed with the same scrutiny as Sweden. Although the lockdown is stricter than in Sweden, that is to say, restaurants are not open and groups larger than 5 people are not allowed, there are nevertheless few of the draconian measures taken by many other countries. There is no police checking people on the streets, individuals have freedom of movement to go shopping, exercise and see each other; funerals can take place with a small number of immediate family members and so on. Taking into account that Switzerland also has a very high rate of infection for its 8M population, that it has a very good testing record and that its slow-down measures also seem to be working, this should be an interesting case study. In the end it is not a question of how many deaths there are, which could be determined by a host of different factors, but rather how the population of each country understands the function of its democracy and how its government should behave towards its people. What appalls me in the manner the US has dealt with this is the political polarisation it has caused. The whole issue seemed to be determined by party politics, whereas in Sweden, Switzerland and several other countries in Europe, politics never entered into it. It was simply a question of finding practical solutions to a threatening health situation.

Heinsberg study. 15% of the population infected (260k population), 0.37% fatality.

Health consequences following this approach could very easily be in vain given immunity questions and permanent damage

Can you please tell me how vegetables and fruits should be washed amid COVID-19 pandemic?

Also Sweden has universal healthcare - and generally healthier people than the USA - actually most developed countries have healthier people than the USA. But ultimately the testing and numbers are not being determined the sane as other countries. So not comparing apples to apples

You make a point at 21:15 saying that Corona virus makes every country equal despite how advance they, then contradict that point a minute later at 22.45 saying America should have done better than India and others due to America's medical advancements.

Sweden is hedging it’s bets.

Swedish guy here. One problem with the high mortality rate that we have is that COVID have manage to get into alot of residential homes, and that´s because of alot of our elder are not taking covid seriously and then visited their husbands/wifes at the residential homes. People up to 40-50yo are very good att social distansing and hygien, but our elders are not. Having a pretty open society we think is better in the long run, many countries who completly shutted down will have a big second wave when they eventually open up, we won´t most likely.

You are forgetting a very important factor, sweden is currently very very wrong on the numbers, they don't test people or hospitalize people nearly enough

There isn’t a clear picture of immunity for SARS-Cov-2. Is it 2 years like for SARS? A few months like for the coronavirus cold? That’s a big gamble to take.

hmmmmm 5:14 some bromance action going on there

Sir, can I get a copy of that spreadsheet?

Nursing homes are blocked, no one are allowed to visit elders there, but we have problems hold the corona out of the nursing homes. We have large nursing homes and more unstable staffing. That is a problem. We have hospitals the help Finland by taking patients About 20% of intensive cares places are free, and we have not open a military hospital. Denmark and Norway are starting to open up as Sweden, they start with schools up to 5 years in Denmark, for instance. And Norway, Denmark, Finland epidemic departments do not agree with their governments. They wanted do the same as we did. The exponential grow rate are something people don't understand how it work, unless trained in the subject. They think linear growth, and get stuff wrong. And Finland is a couple of weeks behind the other three in development of the virus-

At 73 I am concern about only one person dying. And with that in mind I will take every precaution recommendations I am aware of; and, so should all of us. Right now science has several questions and few have been answered to date. Honor those who need to work from home. /Stay home/ Social distant outside/ Mask On/exercise/ Sun/ Good Food/ Fresh air / Charity/ And friendly waves or hellos to everyone we encounter are the keys to combating this tiny monster Cheers

Mass testing needed

Well done. Good objective content and well explained synopsis for those who want a quick and dirty overview of that strategy.. it would be interesting to unpack the death causation stats: 1. Dying with corona versus dying from corona 2. What percentage of the Swedish deaths have underlying conditions (respiratory, cancer etc) ? 3. What is the age range of deaths? 4. Where are the deaths happening around Sweden? Do you have that?

This is comparing apples and oranges. How much testing, how accurate it is, how deaths are reported, how well prepared healthcare systems are. The initial wave of deaths versus the long, drawn out version with economic hurt that the population, not governments, pay for. The UK for one is shitting itself as a result of years of starving the NHS. Now we are in full panic mode and can't even get PPE for front line staff, who we can't afford to have dropping like flies because of understaffing in the first place, nor do we have sufficient manufacturing capacity to produce it because we buy all that stuff from the lowest bidder, usually China or India. Even Joe Thicko has learned not to buy eBay shit from China, but European governments are so desperate they bought a tonne of it only to find - surprise! - it's shit (at least the shit arrived) and red tape makes it more expensive to return, so you bin it only for it to be recycled... in China. Sweden has a fighting chance with its strategy because it's not as stupid as most of the rest of us. Go Sweden!

No testing, no cases! 😷👍

Thank God there is one country who are not behaving like clapping seals over something as silly as the flu.....

I have learned that Sweeden has a national institution for delivering meals for free, twice a day ( lunch/dinner) , for elderly people living in their homes : We may admit that this could have been a significante factor for the hight level of contamination of this populacional segment .

Time of first case does not have much bearing on the disease curve. Many factors are at play that can move peak infection time forward and backward. Perhaps Dr. Tegnell is correct.

you cannot change social libtards. I am from Malaysia, none of us could accept these kind of measures to handle COVID-19 outbreak. We are in such a high alarm state in Malaysia with 84 deaths for 34 million population.

Could u.add time stamp to ur spreadsheet? That we can see date of.data collection... love ur spreadsheet, weekly updates would be appreciated!!

Norway's first Covid-19 case was in late February, not late January.

While talking about the "good part" of case rate , mentioning the test rate was essential along with the model for testing ( random, nearest neighbour etc). I hope the orator would take that into account. Moreover , the data available is highly skewed and under reported due to the economic and political interests of the states, hence any analysis based on the available data set should be done very carefully as such statements are effecting public perception

I think the case and death numbers in each country reflect how many people and which people are being rt-pcr tested.

Ultimately it's about # of deaths of hospitalizations. If those numbers don't trend way upward to match in comparison to other EU countries, or if they look similar, then these guys are geniuses. But, if they do trend up higher, then this is negligent on a grand scale.

Their premise is that over time the area under a low slow curve will eventually be the same as a shorter higher curve.

As other has mentioned: The number pf tests should be include in your calculation: Number of tests in Norway is about 4,5 times higher per capita than Sweden...

Why are we not talking about building health resilience and healthy food systems? The Swedish epidemiologist stated they have an issue with elderly care. Also, vaccinated individuals continue to become infected with other diseases. How would it be different here?

What is your first priority? Lives? Economy?

Im just curious maybe someone can answer , but wouldnt you expect the rate of infection to be much higher ( we know it is ) and shouldnt there be more death than 14/1500 . Death rates mean nothing when you dont have a total number of infections. Its been 3 months since first case , no lockdown , so either its not as contagious and lethal as reported or many many people have it and it is still not as lethal. Anyone ?

Here's in Indonesia with 280 million population first case 2 march until now 18 april only 5000+ cases. No Total lockdown but 50% of activities decreasing. We don't know what we facing. But the people do not agree with total lockdown. Economic is the problem.

Swidish Finance Minister is smart and look into the future after LOCKING AND KNOCKING.

I looked up weather in S Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia and those countries currently have pretty high temps ranging from 80s to over 100 F. (just checked one city for each country) Wondering if this has something to do with lower numbers.

Sweden low case rate is due to low testing result

According to the John Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard... 4/22/2020 10:29 am Sweden has reported 16,004 confirmed cases with 1,937 deaths whereas Ireland has 16404 confirmed cases and 730 deaths, Austria 14,925 with 510 deaths ~ so tell me how is the approach in Sweden better?

I am against lockdown and hand washing, eighty percent will have very mild symptom and does not require medical attention, although India had implemented lockdown,

We had 185 more deaths reported today (more than the total Norway has up until now). We now have 1765 deaths. Also, bars are still open; NOT closed. You just can't eat/drink at the bar, you can order at the bar and go to a table. Our case rate looks as good as it does because we don't test properly. It's that simple. Our death rate looks as bad as it does, because we don't test properly, and haven't attempted to curtail the spread of the virus. Since March 12th, you cannot be tested for COVID-19 in Sweden unless you are in hospital and in a high risk group. The majority of testing (the little there is) is reserved for health workers, police, care workers, etc. My friend returned to Sweden from Italy on March 8th, asked to be tested at several places and was turned down. The only reason our official confirmed infections look so "good", is because we aren't testing most people, even those with symptoms, even those visiting high risk areas. This is also why our death rate seems so high; we actually have far more infected that would make the death rate look lower (but we do have a LOT more infected than our neighbors). They won't "stop this experiment". Both Anders Tegnell, the epidemiologist, and Stefan Löfven, the prime minister, have been priming the public for weeks to let this run the course and not question how it's going. I'm not exagerating. Last week, Löfven gave an interview with Aftonbladet where he said the public should refrain from analyzing the government's strategy and wait until the crisis is over. Similarly, Tegnell said this week that it won't be possible to tell which countries had it wrong and which had it right until 6 months from now. These people have been preemptively preparing their defense and exclusion from the wave of growing scrutiny. When it all comes down to it, this strategy is championed for two reasons in my opinion: a naive religious believe in altruism, and that it's all that is needed to make people behave and hold society together (it's the same misguided thinking that turned cities into ghettos from the migrant crisis). The second reason being that our entire economic structure is based on the exorbitant taxes to fund the welfare state. I think a lot of politicians and leaders have realized how fragile this house of cards is and how quickly it will all come tumbling down if we can't keep the money pouring in from taxes. You are correct, that maybe in the long run, this approach could be better in the sense that society has then built up herd immunity, while others are sitting ducks. However, this ignores the important point that many other leaders have tried to make in that this wait is not intended to be forever: it's to buy time while sufficient vaccine(s) become available. So by that reasoning, you wouldn't need natural herd immunity, because you'd have chemical immunity in the form of an injection, where as a society that just said "bring it on" may be wasting the lives of its people if one becomes readily available in the near future.

We cannot compare different countries with different social behaviours, different population density and different weathers. It's like comparing a folk in the middle of a mountain with London. What suits one can be a disaster for the other

Interestingly, the countries which have controlled the virus spread the best are in F E Asia. Hong Kong, Taiwan, S. Korea...all of which have social distancing, self isolation and mask wearing. Sweden's population is just somewhat higher than that of HK, but the population density in HK is one of the world's highest. No easy answers. We are all going a bit crazy staying home and it's devastating for all economies. But risking a second wave - should it come - would be even more devastating I believe. There is no easy answer here. And there won't be until we have a vaccine. You can't "boost" your immune system...this is a myth..please check that out. You can of course become much healthier, lose weight, stop smoking, exercise...we all know the drill. But for those of us with compromised immune systems due to illness, this virus is a death sentence. Wishing us all well!

The best way to get a real result of the severity of Corona is to compare the amount of mortality in the last years in every county.

Unfortunately, your figures are a little misguided here. With all due respect, there are many idiosyncratic factors that must be taken into account when comparing these statistics. For example, the chief epidemiologist in Sweden has admitted that the way Sweden organized its retirement homes was to blame for the high mortality rate. He pointed out that in Sweden there are hundreds of patients in each of its nursing homes. In Finland or Norway, there are much smaller numbers of patients in their homes. As a result, the virus was able to take hold with a lot more impact in Sweden because the high concentration of older people in localized settings facilitated the spread of the virus in this most vulnerable sector of the community. He blames the high death rate on the fact that they did not isolate and protect their older citizens soon enough. Local factors like these can really skew statistical analyses. In Britain, deaths from the virus in nursing homes are being radically under-reported. So comparative analyses are difficult to validate. Also, secondary waves of the virus are inevitable as restrictions are lifted, meaning that many people currently protected will undoubtedly die when they are exposed. Every country is doing its best to slow down the spread of the virus. Unless a vaccine is developed, everyone will eventually be exposed to the virus anyway. The Swedish system seems more heartless in that it is accepting that more people will die sooner, even though a similar number will eventually die overall. The question is, what are we prepared to pay in order to slow down the spread of the virus? What does it mean to lose our democracy, freedom and liberty? The widespread, global economic downturn is going to kill many people as well, through poorer systems of healthcare, poorer education sectors, poorer access to healthy and nutritious food. What future progress is now lost forever? Also, if the world needs to respond quickly and radically to an environmental disaster, at some time in the future, we may not be in a position to pay for swift and effective action. The ramifications of draconian social restrictions might cost a lot more than we think. It is worth considering that the freedoms we enjoy were very bitterly fought for, and hard won. We lose these at our peril. There are as yet no real experts on how this whole pandemic will play out. It might be that Sweden has made an incalculable error in judgement in the way it is handling this epidemic. But I think that we should pause before being overly critical of their approach. They might very well be doing the right thing. In any case, they are adding to our knowledge of how to deal with similar pandemics in the future. Oh BTW, this is worth considering: what if a new virus were to pop up tomorrow? Or in 8 months' time. Will we have any energy left to deal with it?

Mr Mohammed Kadir has provided some additional information and has countered the concerns expressed by you on the risk taken by the Switzerland. Its like the swiss have set a long term objective like running a marathon instead of sprint. Perhaps in the long term their death rates will be more skewed to their advantage, which remains to be seen. That is to say the herd immunity should bring down the death rate when compared to other countries in the long run. Its good that at least one country took a risk to handle the issue differently. And the numbers that comes out will speak for themselves.

Here in Sweden testing is lagging behind by far. They test about 300.000 people per week in Germany, while in Sweden, we have tested roughly 70k people (according to the Folkhälsomyndigheten yesterday) in total! Who has symptoms can make a ’self-evaltuation’ online and if you’re not seriously ill and have to go to the hospital, you’re never gonna end up in the statistics at all with the current system. This is also a reason why the death rate looks huge. Of all known (tested) cases, most have serious symptoms to start with. And those will serious symptoms have higher chances to die.