Sweden, Covid and ‘excess deaths’: a look at the data

Pandemics kill people in two ways, said Chris Whitty at the start of the Covid outbreak: directly and indirectly, via disruption. He was making the case for caution amidst strong public demand for lockdown, stressing the tradeoffs. While Covid deaths were counted daily, the longer-term effects would take years to come through. The only real way of counting this would be to look at ‘excess deaths’, i.e. how many more people die every month (or year) compared to normal. That data is now coming through. 

Using the most common methodology, Sweden is at the bottom – below Australia and New Zealand, which had plenty of lockdowns but very few Covid deaths. Here are the graphs that we have just published on The Spectator data hub.