Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains
Edit: I&#x27;m letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d be the only one.<p>Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn&#x27;t sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring.<p>I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spreading rate that was bigger than 1, if no measures were taken. So, I&#x27;d expect between 100,000 to 200,000 to have died. I&#x27;m really happy that didn&#x27;t happen. It also makes me curious as to why. Is it because of Sweden&#x27;s demographics (people living alone)? Or is it because the virus isn&#x27;t as deadly as we think it is?<p>How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn&#x27;t this evidence that the coronavirus isn&#x27;t as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths.<p>It&#x27;s awful what happened, but the highest flu season in The Netherlands, for example, killed an estimated 9444 people  [1] on 17,280,000 people, which is slightly higher than what the Swedes had to go through now (also rounded to 0.05%). I know that the novel coronavirus is not a flu, but if this is it, then well, I&#x27;ve seen worse, apparently.<p>I know the virus isn&#x27;t done, but it had months to roam free in Sweden. One would expect it would double up every 5 days in terms of how many people would be infected.<p>Edit: they did need to maintain social distance apparently. I wouldn&#x27;t call that &quot;doing nothing&quot;. Sure a lot more can be done, but I feel the media are framing the Swedes a bit inaccurately. Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable)<p>[1] In Dutch, unfortunately: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rivm.nl&#x2F;monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rivm.nl&#x2F;monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland</a>