This is what it looked like after the first wave. Belgium was the leader worldwide by large numbers. Sweden was 5th.
Fast forward to today:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rate...
Sweden is now ranked at 45. Better than Italy, UK, Spain, France which are better countries to compare Sweden against. Sweden is the hub of Northern Europe and the rate in Finland or Norway doesn't make a great comparison.
Ah yes, the craziest restriction of all, restricting things from being open at night. That way, everyone goes at the same time increasing crowding. But since less people are allowed in, everyone crowds around waiting to get in.
So now a place that would have 1 person an hour over 10 hours, instead has 2 people an hour over 5 hours, eg. Does the virus not spread at night or something? I'd think it would make more sense to mandate businesses open more hours, that way people are dispersed across more time and thus less crowded.
I don't understand, there must be an obvious reason I'm missing though (most likely!)
That was not the case[1]. Even 50-year-olds in Sweden had a spike of deaths in 2020.
Norwegians were locked down and seem to be fine. They're not dead, at least.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-sweden-co...
Also the paper you linked agrees with me, The highest age groups, i.e. ages 80 and above, were most strongly affected by the pandemic.
> it had nothing to do with regular people eating at restaurants and everything to do with the protocol at those specific places
Also if we're going to be pedantic, we should be consistently pedantic:
> 50% of all COVID deaths were in nursing homes
that article actually says under 50% and it's from December 2020.
Still haven't addressed my point about Belgium having more restrictive lockdowns and a higher excess mortality. I guess being pedantic is easier.
False[1][2][3][4][5]. Sweden had 7.7% higher mortality in 2020 than it averaged from 2016-2019.
By comparison, Sweden's closest neighbors (geographically, demographically, and socioeconomically) had far, far lower mortality because of lockdowns, mask mandates, and closing restaurants[3][4].
> "Sweden, with a COVID-19 attributed death rate of 0.54 per 1000 population as of July 5, has a higher death rate compared with its neighbours: 11.5× compared with Norway (0.05 deaths per 1000 population), 5.1× compared with Denmark (0.10 deaths per 1000 population), and 9.1× compared with Finland (0.06 deaths per 1000 population)."[1]
Even more damning: we now know that Sweden intentionally allowed the virus to spread and never believed their own words about people behaving responsibly without mandates[5]. They knew that their lack of action would kill people.
You can argue all you want that some of those deaths are a fair price to pay to eat at restaurants, but you can't argue that they didn't happen or that no one could have prevented them.
1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14034948209802...
2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe...
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9
4. https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-been-so-so-surr...
5. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/sweden-coronavirus-covi...