Sweden’s strategy on Covid19; my analysis

This analysis was written on 05-06-2020.

Sweden employed a different strategy to deal with this pandemic whereby no lockdown was enforced. Public was educated to practice voluntary social distancing and large gatherings were banned. This was a spectacular departure from the arguably draconian lockdowns enforced in countries around the world especially Europe leading to massive polarization of opinions.

Sweden managed to successfully flatten the proverbial “curve” and prevent the health system from being overwhelmed which was their stated goal. However, the death rate in Sweden is one of the top ten; less than UK, Italy, Belgium and Spain but higher than other Scandinavian neighbors who enforced complete early lockdowns.

Clearly Sweden has managed to achieve similar if not better results if compared to countries like USA, UK, Spain and Italy etc with far relaxed measures. Whether the Nordic neighbors have outperformed Sweden with strict and early lockdowns, remains to be seen.

The epidemiologists who designed and lead Sweden’s response to this pandemic have not been shy to accept the shortcomings of Sweden’s strategy; the most important being the spread of the virus in care homes among the extremely vulnerable group leading to a lot of deaths. More than 50% of deaths in Sweden have emanated from this group.

The critics of Sweden’s strategy are quick to compare the higher death rate of Sweden with their neighbors but they are missing an important point; the seroprevalence of Covid19 antibodies in Sweden. This is an indirect marker of the proportion of people that have already contracted the illness; theoretically offering at least some protection for any future infection.

The studies and estimates show that Sweden is at least 10 times ahead of its neighbors in terms of seroprevalence. When the neighbors of Sweden reach this level of seroprevalence, they will probably have similar number of deaths barring some significant interventions detailed below.

There are two scenarios whereby Sweden’s strategy will be proved conclusively wrong.

⭕️ First is early and widespread availability of vaccination which can be used to immunize large proportions of the population; all scientific estimates show that vaccine can be 12 months away. If early vaccine does become available ( I hope and pray that it does), strict early lockdowns will have been proven to be the best strategy in the developed world.

⭕️ The second scenario is if countries can find ways to effectively shield the extremely vulnerable groups from the virus while letting it spread in the community; this is easier said than done given the way care staff has to works in these institutions and the abundant traffic of residents to and from the hospitals.

Scientific strategies have to be made on probabilities and not on hope, prayers or luck. In my opinion, it is extremely probable that when history looks back on how humanity dealt with this challenge of biblical proportions, Sweden’s strategy will turn out to be one of the most sensible ones.

Regards
Shoaib