Sweden, lockdowns and mortality rates

The always interesting Ivor Cummins explains why lockdowns don't work and why most of what you think you know about the mortality effects of Covid -- 'excess deaths' -- are wrong. With a primary focus on Sweden -- the most noted non-lockdown country besides Brazil -- and its health history. For example, the graph below illustrates 130 years of mortality in Sweden, per million. Note the impact of previous epidemics (e.g., Russian flu, Spanish flu), diseases (e.g., cholera, dysentery), and famine (1869), all of which produced a higher mortality rate than did Covid. Even were one to start the analysis fifty years ago, the Covid pandemic would still place fourth in its impact, and none of those previous tolls had a lockdown.

Using publicly available data and charts, Cummins also explains the importance of overall death rates and how the relate to Covid (see below). Highlighting the United States (see graph, below), he shows how rather than driving up overall mortality rates, Covid has actually decreased overall mortality rates, even with a much larger elderly population, e.g., in 1900 there were three million Americans aged 65 or older. Today there are over 49 million Americans older than 65. Covid is especially brutal on the elderly. And overall Covid mortality rates across countries often align with the average age of the population. Countries that have been successful in curbing most of the causes of death prior to age 65 have produced a large elderly population. Unlike the Biden Covid advisor, most people do not want to die by age 75. People who maintain their health with exercise, nutrition, and temperance are less vulnerable at an elderly age, but those who do not maintain their health are especially vulnerable to Covid and related viruses and lung diseases and conditions. Pre-existing co-morbidities stemming from lifestyle and choice prior to age 65 are overwhelmingly present in Covid-present deaths.

Next, a Swedish scientist, Sebastian Rushworth, clearly explains more of the real story behind the pandemic. Rushworth is cautiously optimistic about the no-lockdown practices of Sweden and cleanly deflects the critics who compare Swedish Covid deaths with those in neighboring Norway and Finland. First of all, being neighbors is not the reason to expect similar mortality rates. Specifically, Sweden has a proportionally much large elderly population, with significant use of nursing homes for end-of-life care. Also, Sweden has a mobile, globe-trekking population, a population much more likely than in Finland or Norway to import and transmit the virus back at its key entry point in February 2020. Finally, Sweden also has a larger, vulnerable immigrant population.