A new report from Swiss Policy Research concludes that after 22 months of the COVID pandemic: “Sweden Has Been Vindicated.”
The nation of 10 million was roundly attacked in March, 2020 when it imposed no lockdowns, no elementary school closures, no mask mandates, and didn’t introduce any “vaccine passport”. The Swiss researchers say Sweden has already crossed the “pandemic finish line.” It is the first Western country to see the return of significant influenza, which has been pushed aside everywhere by COVID for the last two years. Sweden will still see COVID waves but it has now reached a high enough infection rate (between 605% and 75%) and has entered the endemic phase.
The report compares Sweden to Austria, a country that imposed severe lockdowns, closed schools, mandated harsh mask mandates, and was the first Western country to impose a vaccine mandate and bar the unvaccinated from entering businesses.
Despite all this, Austria has overtaken Sweden in terms of total COVID mortality and last month had the seven-day covid infection rate in the world. The European average covid mortality had already overtaken Swedish covid mortality back in March 2021.
The entire Swiss paper is worth reading, especially for its explanation of how other Scandinavian countries fared even better than Sweden.