As usual, it’s complicated.
Sweden did not impose strict limits on citizens’ rights. People went to work and ate at restaurants and faced very few restrictions. Children in lower grades attended school but highschools and universities utilized distance learning.
Businesses stayed open. Those who could work from home were advised to do so but no laws were passed and no orders were given telling people to stay home. The government did ask it’s citizens to refrain from non-essential travel and asked people to practice social distancing, hand washing, and considerable measures were taken to protect people over the age of 70.
This “herd immunity” approach is in stark contrast to its neighbors like Finland, which banned gatherings of 10 or more, declared a state of emergency, and closed all schools, restaurants, cafes, and bars. India imposed a lockdown for 1.3 billion people, and Germany banned crowds of two or more people. The herd immunity concept is where so many people contract the virus that the people develop natural resistance without the need for a vaccine.
Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said Sweden’s approach is based on science, saying, “We are trying to slow the spread enough so that we can deal with the patients coming in.”
Mr. Tegnell says this approach relies on people’s self-restraint and sense of responsibility.
That’s the way we work in Sweden. Our whole system for communicable disease control is based on voluntary action. The immunization system is completely voluntary and there is 98 percent coverage.
You give them the option to do what is best in their lives. That works very well, according to our experience.
Anders Tegnell – NY Times
There’s a substantial difference between Sweden’s government and other governments. The country enjoys very high levels of trust in its government. Their Constitution is very clearly and specifically designed not to curb individual freedoms. Citizens have confidence in their government and in its public institutions. It’s also important to note that Sweden’s population density is less dense than many other countries and it is a very homogeneous society.
Has Sweden’s Approach Worked?
Sweden reports fewer deaths than Italy. But Italy has a much older population, more people smoke, and people live more clustered together in close-knit, multigenerational households.
Nearly 4,500 Swedes are said to have died from coronavirus, putting the country in eighth place for the highest deaths per capita. Sweden says around half of the deaths were elderly people living in care facilities.
Swedish officials thought Stockholm, the capital, could be approaching “herd immunity,” but recent antibody testing in Stockholm found that only 7.3% of those tested had SARS-COV-2 antibodies. Anders Tegnell called the figure “a bit lower than we’d thought.”
An antibody test cannot tell if you are actively infected. It takes a few weeks from when one is infected to build up enough antibodies for the test to register positive. It’s also important to note that there are issues with inaccuracy of antibody testing that could cause lower or higher results than what is accurate. In addition, we don’t even know how long coronavirus antibodies last in our bodies ! Some speculate only two to three months. Sweden’s real numbers could be a little higher or a little lower, we don’t know. Regardless, 7% is much lower than they hoped.
The media is capitalizing on Anders Tegnell’s most recent comments, with news outlets reporting in a way to indicate that even Sweden admits its approach was all wrong. The epidemiologist said that in hindsight Sweden should have done more.
If we were to run into the same disease, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would end up doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.
Yes, I think we could have done better than what we did in Sweden, clearly.
Reuters
Anders Tegnell is clearly not saying that Sweden should have enacted draconian measures like that of many of its neighboring countries.
It’s also important to know that Sweden’s death rate is lower than the U.K., France, and Spain while the USA, Netherlands, and Ireland aren’t far behind.
Also, comparing any European country to the U.S.A is difficult. New York and New Jersey both have a death rate higher than any other country. The United States has pockets of incredibly dense urban living contrasted by vast areas of much lower population densities along with everything in between. Some states implemented strict guidelines, some states ordered people to shelter in place under threat of law, and some states did next to nothing.
And Sweden’s economy expanded while almost every other country’s economy has seen a drastic contraction.
The Netherlands took a similar approach. They show similar results. Brazil’s president Jair Messias Bolsonaro has largely been dismissive of coronavirus fears even going so far as to call it a “media hoax“. Now Brazil is looking at the second most coronavirus cases, second only to the U.S., with total deaths putting them in 4th place behind USA, UK, and Italy, but deaths per capita has Brazil in 20th place, below many countries that took the virus much more seriously.
What We Should Have Done
They say hindsight is 20/20 but we’re not at a place yet where hindsight is clear. We don’t know who the biggest losers will be until the dust settles, and with the economic impact yet to be fully realized, it’s impossible to even guess. We all know that death rates rise when economies collapse, but death rates also rise when economies grow. A stable economy preserves lives. A U-shaped, V-shaped, or lagging L-shaped economy will cause a lot of deaths.
We also have no idea how hard a virus is going to damage society until it hits a population, and the same virus can cause very different results in differing populations. It’s easy to say, “Look, see, we all overreacted!” when it’s all said and done, but it’s very difficult to know what would have been the results if we ignored the threat.
It’s also hard to know the truth when hospitals rely on government subsidies for using ventilators, testing is poorly done, the CDC mixes up test results, and processed food and big-pharma companies run the media (with a vested interest in keeping us unhealthy). The reality is that access to clean water, good plumbing, and a healthy diet does radically more to prevent and eradicate disease than any vaccine or lockdown or anything else we’ve ever tried.
Of course, we at Organic Lifestyle Magazine would like to see a radically different approach to pandemics that isn’t talked about at all in the media. But science is just starting to catch on.
The state of your gut bacteria is the best indication of your health that we know of, and a healthy gut microbiome equates to a stronger immune system. A recent study showed that people with prior gastrointestinal issues realize poorer outcomes. That’s not because Covid-19 hits the gut, it’s because a healthy gut microbiome supplies the entire body with beneficial bacteria. And when a person has a large enough and diverse amount of healthy bacteria in their body it’s difficult for pathogens to get a foothold (or a corona-hold in this case).
It’s not as simple as taking a probiotic, though that’s better than nothing. To heal the gut one needs to eat right in order to supply the gut with the right prebiotics to populate the gut with a diverse population.
If catching coronavirus (or the flu, or ebola, or any pathogen) concerns you, get your gut well. For more on this check out How To Heal Your Gut.
If we ruled the world (or a country) we’d ask our population to drink cranberry lemonade with stevia, eat lots of salads, take an antifungal fatty acid like SF722, and don’t smoke or use other drugs. The information from the aforementioned gut article would be mandatory learning for everyone in school. And we would see that people who choose to ignore their health are the ones who would be dying – but then again, that’s what we see now. While the media likes to cherry-pick the unusual case of a supposedly perfectly healthy child or athletic adult coming down with coronavirus and dying, it’s extremely unusual, and we cannot find a single case of a person dying from Covid-19 who actually was truly healthy. This is also true for the flu. We logically suspect it’s also true for any pathogenic illness because that’s just how nature works!
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