There are differences among these countries, but first, let's talk about reporting. Sweden says any death within a month of a Covid diagnosis (no PCR+ required, another can of worms) is due to Covid. Other Nordics are less sloppy. This makes Sweden count more deaths.

Finland is a hot mess on all health stats.

Norway has done better but also disavowed lockdowns.

Policy concerning covid diagnosis is not relevant when the metric under discussion is excess mortality.

I agree (modulo "top" vs. "bottom" when we're talking about worse being greater-than), but your "at the bottom of the Nordics" was not about excess mortality.

Quote: "It is somewhat suggestive that none of Sweden's direct neighbours show significant excess mortality in 2020..."

Also, I wonder what you mean by Norway disavowing lockdowns? Because they did institute fairly strict measures on March 12, eventually going so far as forbidding people to travel to their cabins to avoid putting strain on rural infrastructure.

Was there some sort of public disavowal after the fact?

The “bottom of the pack” was in reference to ourworldindata cumulative Covid deaths (counted differently in different countries). Could you please link me to the multi-country excess morality data?

> Could you please link me to the multi-country excess morality data?

Not sure if there's something better, I just clicked through https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... via 'Change country'.

As the graphs can be misleading due to the different scaling of the y-axis depending on the country, I also pulled the data and did my own analysis, eg comparing 'Sweden' against 'all Nordics' and 'all Nordics but Sweden'.

For Denmark, Finland and Norway combined, there were fewer deaths at the beginning of the year compared to the previous 5-year average, and a bit more deaths in April and May - basically a wash, ie 'no worse than the flu'.

The situation in Sweden is different, with significant excess mortality.

Thanks. Any age-cohort data?

No, my own dive down the Covid rabbit hole has been fairly shallow so far (I used to keep track of local numbers, but eventually stopped; a couple of weeks ago, I looked at excess mortality in the Nordics because Sweden continued to pop up in online discussions).