In this article for Debunking Denialism, author Emil Karlsson attempts to wade through widespread misinformation to see the real facts about the Swedish coronavirus strategy. It looks at the primary data in official reports and statements made by Swedish public health officials. 

Karlsson’s research shows that Sweden did in fact have a grand strategy at defeating COVID which he categorized into two: flattening the curve and protecting the elderly. Unlike other countries which opted to impose lockdowns to flatten the curve, Sweden invested in its health care system and some minimal impositions on social mobility. The country boosted its ICU capacity (with beds fully equipped with the required supplies and necessary staff). Sweden’s health care system was ready for the expected surge in cases which never came [this can be attributed to the erroneous Imperial College Model, see More Data Gathered, More Proof That Early Fatality Estimates Were Massively Exaggerated and Faulty COVID-19 Tests: Why Prisoners Love Their Jailers And Never-Ending Lockdowns].

Karlsson also shows Sweden’s success in many key indicators. The number of serious cases (in Sweden, this is defined as cases that required any kind of treatment at a hospital, it does not necessarily refer to critical cases which are in need of ventilators and invasive treatment) is in long term decline, and even the number of mild cases is dropping, even with increased testing. Karlsson’s research also shows that death in elderly care facilities are also in rapid decline as the country has rolled out interventions to protect their most vulnerable population. He says that voluntary measures as utilized in Sweden worked. He adds that lockdowns can be a good idea, but that they must only be maintained for a brief amount of time, and there has to be a workable post-lockdown plan that will be utilized in the long term. Karlsson concludes that while it is possible for Sweden to experience a resurgence of cases after the summer, its population may be more protected compared to other countries. 

Editor’s Note: From Karlsson’s analysis, we can see clearly that Sweden is truly winning this round and its short-term “failure” as indicated by the huge death rate among its elderly population, is gained back by learning from its mistakes and through the improved immunity in the greater population. 

Andrew Tegnell himself admits that more could have been done to protect the elderly. From their initial error, they have rectified their approach to provide greater protection for those in care homes, and Karlsson shows us that their new approach is paying off.

Perhaps the greatest point of this article is that there is lesser panic among Swedes – their health care system is ready, and they know that their approach works. It is easily replicated and will have minimal effects when implemented by many countries around the world.

Another point we wish to highlight in this article is this. We did not know that Karlsson’s article exists – we simply wanted to find out what was happening to Sweden. We had to go through pages of search results (using the search terms Sweden and COVID) in Google and DuckDuckGo (which was surprising!) which only returned the “failure” of the Swedish approach, many of which were written as far back as May. We found the Karlsson article through an unknown search engine, and by doing a search using a more specific search term, “drop of COVID infection in Sweden” [we also related a similar experience in Study: Treatment With Hydrochloroquine Cut COVID-19 Death Rate Significantly].

This gives us a picture of algorithmic manipulation happening online, where successes against COVID are typically demoted, and those in top searches are articles that fuel further panic. This is why we have to be wary of the mainstream COVID narrative [read The Pandemic of Censorship and How Are Users Algorithmically Controlled While Online? to better understand our point].

Karlsson offers an important conclusion in his article: there is a way to discern the truth about COVID-19, but one must be truly committed to finding it. If you look through Karlsson’s site, you will see that our website and his do not agree on many issues. But one thing that can be appreciated with his work is this: he performs robust research to prove his point. This skill is particularly important today, as even the “experts” are not infallible [this is one way we can end all lockdowns, to know more read, END THE LOCKDOWNS! Stop It Outside By Ending the Lockdowns Inside Us].

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