Here’s some Swedish data that looks pretty accurate (this page has been decent).
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
But this is key - the Swedes have far less of a “ME ME ME!!!” Attitude than Americans, in that they also think of their society as a whole, not merely of themselves as individuals and “MUH RIGHTZ.”
Maybe because there are still a lot of us that obeyed the stay at home and social distancing guidelines. Could be! 
There was one period - May 13 to May 20 - where Sweden had the worst per-capita death rate in the world. They’ve been catching up to some familiar ‘heavyweights’ as far as per-capita deaths - France, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and Belgium. But overall things are going very smoothly, no “exploding” or violent trend changes. Sweden has had a decline from their peak death rate thus far, just not as much as those other countries.
Eh. Maybe. Almost half the deaths have been in nursing homes where people go to die. Callous? Maybe. But nobody who is healthy and can take care of themselves go into nursing homes. How many would die anyway?
The only statistic that matters is overall death rates. Positive for COVID-19? No worries as most recover. I have not seen a single statistic that shows the overall mortality rate has increased while we wreck the economy.
“It’s only old people who were ready to die anyway.”
Could get a seat on the RNC with a “FU old unproductive societal dregs” attitude like that.
This a really good read (from a real doctor, not a Facebook Karen), and it does mention Sweden, but not in a particularly complimentary way.
Well worth a read for anyone interested in the overall topic of COVID-19. (Yes, it’s a bit long despite being split up into easy to read sections, so the meme-spreaders will struggle, but people with a brain will cope just fine.)
I never said that, but I am not as sentimental as you are about people who have lived long, full lives and are at the end of their life in a nursing home.
The statistics would be more worrisome if half the deaths were young people instead of very sick nursing home patients.
It really varies. Norway and South Africa, for example, are below the normal expected number of deaths. Economic slowdowns tend to reduce overall mortality, and the Covid-19 deaths in those two countries have not been enough to make up the difference.
Toward the other end of things are Spain, the U.K., Belgium, Ecuador, etc. Those four, from March-April or March-May, were well over the normal mortality, +60%, +63%, +63%, and +84%. New York City, from mid-March to mid-May, was +254%.
One can question the underpinnings, which in our case is a vast amount of debt, but there’s precious little that any of us can do about that, as individuals, almost without exception. The effect on the economy is mostly not a matter of policy, i.e. the global markets and people’s behavior changed a lot even without any gov’t decrees. The study below found that ~1/4 of the rise in unemployment was the direct effect of stay-at-home orders.
We calculate that the direct effect of stay-at-home orders is accountable for 4 million unemployment insurance claims between 14 March and 4 April, which accounts for approximately a quarter of the overall rise in unemployment claims in that period. The direct effect of stay-at-home orders on unemployment is therefore small relative to the aggregate increase in unemployment insurance claims, suggesting that a large majority of the increase in unemployment may have occurred in the absence of such orders.
Where do these numbers come from? I looked up the UK and they had 616,000 deaths in 2018 or 51,000 per month. They have 37,000 deaths in the past 3 months from COVID, or 12,300 per month average. How is that a 63% in overall mortality?
The U.K. has a big gap - take out the reported Covid-19 deaths and there’s still a lot above the expected amount.
For the U.K. it was over 8 weeks - March 14 through May 8. The Office of National Statistics for England and Wales, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, and the National Records of Scotland.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales - there’s England + Wales.
I added the weeks up again, and for England and Wales it’s an extra 49,467 deaths in those 8 weeks. There’s another week of data there now, with another 4,385 deaths beyond what’s average.
The two biggest weeks were in April for England & Wales, 113% and 110% above average. For those 8 weeks as a whole it was +60%. Since there’s now another week of data presented - for the past 8 weeks of reported deaths, England and Wales are 66% above average.
That’s pretty comprehensive. Well done.