Sweden's coronavirus plan failed to stop the virus, and a vaccine may not be enough to 'rescue' them, experts warn
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11...ce-with-its-rogue-coronavirus-policy/12922932
Sweden's failed coronavirus herd immunity gamble came at a high cost of lives and the country could still have to implement a lockdown to tackle the spread, experts say.
From the start, Sweden's approach to dealing with coronavirus was flawed, according to Professor David Goldsmith, the lead author of
a paper published by the UK's Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
In it, Professor Goldsmith examined what went wrong with Sweden's policy and why its case mortality rate is about triple that of its Scandinavian neighbours.
And with a severe second wave presently moving through the country, he believes drastic measures need to be undertaken to control the spread.
"Sweden, unfortunately, have done the wrong thing in the wrong way," Professor Goldsmith told the ABC.
"They thought they were going to get this herd immunity nonsense."
While herd immunity has never been confirmed as official policy, Professor Goldsmith was adamant Sweden was hoping enough of its population would develop antibodies that infection rates would start to drop after six to 12 months.
"Honestly, there was never a chance of that being a sensible approach," he said.
"Nobody has ever tried to control a pandemic or an epidemic by inducing herd immunity.
"They deny it now, I know they do, but the evidence is abundantly clear."
Measure of antibodies taken in June and July from people in Stockholm, the epicentre of Sweden's first wave, found only about 15 per cent of the population had them.
Around this time, the country's case and death rates were dropping.
Questions were being asked about whether Sweden had found a decent way to balance the competing priorities of handling the health crisis and its economic impacts.
But by August and September, the second wave of COVID-19 was firmly gripping the country.
Professor Goldsmith said Sweden should have seen it coming from observing
what was happening in the UK, France, Italy and Spain.
"What was it about the Swedes that would simply mean they could sit there and expect not to have a second wave of such severity?" he said.
"It astonishes me. I think they were caught up in their own bullshit."
From the outset, Sweden had three pillars to their coronavirus response, Professor Goldsmith said.
Herd immunity, avoiding economic damage and making measures sustainable.
But with infection rates soaring to record highs in the second wave, is enough being done? And what do
recent announcements about promising vaccine candidates mean for Sweden?
The statistics told a story, but did Sweden listen?
Sweden has gained international attention for its unorthodox response to the pandemic.
It has shunned lockdowns and widespread use of face masks and instead relied on mainly voluntary measures even as the pandemic hit the country increasingly hard.
Some of the results of this approach are borne out in simple numbers.
There have been 225,560 cases of coronavirus in Sweden, a country of 10 million, and 6,500 people have died.
For comparison, in Australia, which has a population of 25 million, there have been 27,854 cases and 907 deaths.
Against numbers from large countries like the US, India or Brazil, Sweden's tallies don't seem too bad.
But when those case statistics are looked at in another context a different picture emerges.
"They say 'yeah, we've got more deaths than Finland and Norway, but we've got fewer deaths than Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK', sure," Professor Goldsmith said.
"Choosing your comparisons is like marking your own homework — it's very easy to get top marks."
Chair in Epidemiology at Deakin University, Professor Catherine Bennett, said Sweden's case fatality rate was about 3 per cent, compared to about 1 per cent across the rest of Scandinavia.
"That's an extraordinary death rate," she told the ABC.
Sweden's COVID-19 death toll per capita is more than 10 times Norway's and nearly five times that of Denmark.
Both professors were critical of the low rate of testing in the country.
In the early days of the pandemic, Sweden was only testing about 25,000 people at most each day.
Throughout the past 10 weeks, that has increased massively.
European Centre for Disease Control data shows Sweden carried out a record 254,000 tests in the second week of November.
Denmark and Norway, both with roughly half the population of Sweden and much lower infection rates, managed 486,000 and 157,000 tests respectively during that time.
