Sweden benefits from being very moderate in density compared to NYC. Stockholm is comparable in size and density to Washington, DC. The death rate in Stockholm is about 5 times higher than DC.
3,3k has so far died in Sweden and the population is 10 million. I believe 22k has died out of 8.3m in NYC, so NYC seems clearly worse.
The strategy was to face more infections short term in favor of quick herd immunity so it’s actually a very positive sign for the strategy that the death rate is not higher than NYC.
Considering that the curve has flattened and herd immunity is projected in a couple of weeks, it is not clear the total deaths in virus lifecycle will be bad.
NYC is clearly worse, but NYC is also vastly worse than any other place in the US. In terms of density and scale of international travel (or the lack of both), Sweden is more comparable to Maryland or Virginia. Virginia, with 8.5 million people, has had less than 900 deaths. DC, which is only a bit smaller than Stockholm and similar in density, has had just 328 deaths, compared to over 1,200 in Stockholm
Correct about Sweden. We can compare Sweden to Switzerland (8.5 million vs 10 mil pop in Sweden). Switz has 1870 deaths, Sweden 3460. Sweden is far worse per capita than it's small northern euro neighbors too (actually deaths per million, Sweden, then Norway, Finland, Denmark are (343) and (42, 51, 92). IHME [1] estimates Sweden will have 5760 deaths, Switz 1935. Correcting for relative populations (10/8.5) Switz's 1935 * 10/8.5 = 2275 roughly expected.
I'm not sure why people have seized on Sweden as doing it right, but they will kill about 3.5k extra people compared to Switz (excess deaths). Compared to their northern neighbors they about 8x worse.
> I'm not sure why people have seized on Sweden as doing it right
Sweden is one of the countries that have enacted the least strict measures, it's an outlier in strategy, and has therefore attracted a lot of attention from people wishing to use it as an example while arguing for their own strategy.
According to the lockdown aficionados, Sweden is a zombie wasteland whose officials are gleefully sacrificing the elderly, while the nation's youth is cavorting on the streets spreading the virus indiscriminately, and in two weeks the death rate is going to spike, just you wait! Therefore, lockdowns are a necessity!
According to the lockdown skeptics, Sweden is a bastion of freedom and liberty where it's business as usual, not a single restaurant or bar closed, all schools are open, and the streets are full of people enjoying life like normal. Sweden has a death rate similar to many European countries, therefore lockdowns are completely unnecessary!
The truth is of course that both of these viewpoints are wrong, and most importantly, you can't assume that applying Sweden's strategy anywhere else would get the same results. But that doesn't stop people from cherrypicking exactly the stats they like in order to argue for the strategy they like.
Also note that IHME has up until recently been absolutely, fantastically, horribly wrong in their projections for Sweden. Like many other comparison sites, they're using the reporting dates for deaths instead of the actual death dates. If you want better data for Sweden, please check out this site instead: https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
Norway has an order of magnitude fewer deaths than Sweden, despite otherwise being very similar countries. Yet randomized tests of citizens in Oslo, the capital and one of the hotbeds for COVID-19, show only ~2% had antibodies[1].
So we went into hard lockdown unlike Sweden, probably saved a lot of people initially, but what will happen now that we're opening the country again?
Density in Sweden is 64 per square mile while in NY state its 421 per square mile. However, much of the population live in cities such as Stockholm that has population density 12,800 per square mile compared to 66,940 for NYC.
If the dire high hospitalization and high death rate theory underlying lockdown was true, you would without lockdown expect worse than NYC death rates in Stockholm because it is very dense and we don't see that.
Moreover, wouldn't number of social contacts rather than population density be a better metric here? Population density is normally a proxy for number of social contacts, but NYC is in lockdown while Sweden is not.
