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[Tyrone Slothrop]

throughout the covid19 crisis sweden has been held out as the counterexample to policies pursued throughout europe and north america: No lockdowns, accept a high death toll and push on to herd immunity. The picture has been mixed. Sweden has a dramatically higher death toll than neighboring scandinavian countries to which it is geographically proximate and demographically similar. But it has still fared better than hard-hit countries like italy, france and the united kingdom, which eventually pushed hard lockdowns to stem the spread of covid.

But the real story is buried down at the end of this recent article in the times.

The times looked at mobility data from google and found that swedes were going to restaurants, shops and recreational areas at comparable rates to residents of other european countries. Buried even further down we find that sweden’s gdp is expected to contract by 7 to 10 percent this year, again on par with estimates in other european countries.

In other words, the idea that sweden was going to plow head on into the epidemic, have a high mortality but not wreck its economy really isn’t true on either score. Despite what seems like a dramatically different policy, the reality on the ground sounds fairly similar. Economic impact seems comparable. Any sense that countries could avoid the economic calamity with the kind of ‘just man up’ approach trump world is encouraging doesn’t seem to have saved sweden from economic calamity. Individual swedes also seem to have ramped down economic and social activity nearly as much as residents of other countries.

tpm