Covid Comparisons with Sweden

Lockdown skeptics on Twitter are obsessed with comparing the UK's lockdown with Sweden's experience, but they won't take into account the huge differences between the UK and Sweden.

Factors that may have contributed to Sweden's relatively favorable COVID-19 experience include: 

• Early and widespread testing: Sweden implemented widespread testing and contact tracing measures from the start of the pandemic, which helped to identify and isolate infected individuals. 
• High levels of social trust: Sweden has a strong culture of social responsibility and public health consciousness, which may have encouraged individuals to voluntarily adhere to recommended guidelines. 
• Strong healthcare system: Sweden's healthcare system is well-funded and has a high capacity to handle surges in demand, which helped to ensure adequate care for COVID-19 patients. 
• Delayed peak of the pandemic: Sweden's peak of the pandemic came later than in many other countries, which may have given the healthcare system more time to prepare and adapt. 
• Effective use of mask-wearing: Sweden emphasized mask-wearing as a personal responsibility rather than a mandatory measure, and research suggests that this approach may have contributed to slower transmission rates. However, more recent studies show masks were ineffective due to aerosol transmission.
• Migration: Swedes head to their remote cabins in the hills for much of the summer. It's almost impossible to do business in Stockholm for a couple of months in the summer.
• Population density: Sweden is much less densely populated than Britain. Sweden has 23 people per square km compared to the UK's 275. Even adjusting for uninhabited areas, it's still 29 in Sweden vs 307 in the UK.

A better comparison would be closer to home - the Isle of Man, where the deaths per 100,000 were half that of mainland UK and the excess deaths far lower.

While the  Isle of Man has a lower population density than mainland Britain, if the uninhabited areas of both are taken out of the equation, the population densities are much closer than the case of the UK and Sweden.

Click to enlarge the table above (source: Google Bard), which shows how much better the Isle of Man fared by early action.