Sweden Shreds Mask Advocates, With No Masks or Lockdown Has 12% Lower COVID Death Rate Than US

The country of Sweden, which never had mask laws and never locked down, now has a 12% lower death rate from COVID than the US. It also has a lower death rate - deaths per million in population - than the harsh lockdown nations of Italy, Spain, Belgium, and many others. Remarkably, Sweden even suffers from a higher obesity rate than the US.

The website MedicalXpress.com reported in "Sweden bucks trend in refusing to recommend masks":

While most of the world has come to terms with covering their noses and mouths in crowded places, people in Sweden are going without, riding buses and metros, shopping for food, and going to school maskless, with only a few rare souls covering up...Sweden never closed its schools, businesses or cafes and restaurants, allowing the virus to circulate, and has therefore had a consistently high level of community transmission.

COVID Deaths per Million in Population, as of October 13

By "allowing the virus to circulate," at the same time sheltering people in nursing homes and other vulnerable locations, Sweden did what nations have done historically at the outset of any respiratory virus outbreak: nothing. People stayed home when sick, washed their hands often, and lived life. Without masks.

Despite media coverage comparing the COVID pandemic to the Spanish Flu of 1918, a media omission in pandemic coverage is that the US, and the world, lived through similar pandemics in 1957 and 1968, but few people at the time even knew about them. As with today, nursing homes were overwhelmingly affected. In per capita terms, roughly the same number of people died in the US in the 1957-1958 season of the H2N2 Asian Flu, which had an infection fatality rate (IFR) of .7%, making it more severe than the current coronavirus, which has a revised IFR of about .2%.

Yet neither in 1957 or 1968 there was ever any hint, nor even whisper, of closing businesses or requiring people to wear masks.

As for Swedish policy on masks as its death rate falls, MedicalXpress.com reports it was a deliberate decision, not just an oversight:

"State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell of the Public Health Agency insists scientific studies have not proven that masks are effective in limiting the spread of the virus, suggesting they can do more harm than good if used sloppily. There are at least three heavyweight reports—from the World Health Organization, the (EU health agency) ECDC and The Lancet report that the WHO cites—which all state that the scientific evidence is weak."

In another omission, many media pieces topping the Internet COVID news discuss the possible severe after-effects of COVID. But they consistently fail to mention that almost any severe case of a respiratory illness, such as influenzas, can have long-lasting after-effects on the heart, lungs, and other organs. But the vast majority of infections do not. Without minimizing COVID, the inclusion of context is one of the fundamental jobs of a reporter. However, in reporting on COVID, even the tone of newscaster delivery seems aimed at sustaining hysteria.

One might excuse the news industry for such behavior by recalling the industry maxim "If it bleeds it leads," another way of saying that focusing on the bad is what sells newspapers, or television advertising. But with the juicy story of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's transfer of COVID patients into New York nursing homes, the maxim suddenly breaks down.

Cuomo's transfer of patients as reported in the New York Post and AARP resulted in the deaths of perhaps thousands of elders, according to nursing home executives who have even gone on record. One said Cuomo has "blood on his hands."

If there were ever a story which had all the hallmarks of a bloody, juicy scoop, this would be it. Along with similar accusations at the governors of Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. All have met with yawns, on the part of the Don Lemons and Anderson Coopers of the network and big cable channels. Spikes in new cases yes. Bloody murder, no.

In fact, in the non-stop media coverage of the current pandemic, which consists almost exclusively of the drumbeat over "new cases" and "hotspots," most telling is what is not being told.

• The British professor whose model predicted millions dead in the US if masks and "lockdowns" were not put into place, Professor Neil Ferguson, has been pilloried as a "charlatan" in the scientific community, and his model denounced as "one of the most wrong" models in history.

• As most of the world moves into the sixth month of unprecedented destruction of jobs and businesses due to the "lockdowns," a term first applied to the general public after the Boston Marathon bombing, Sweden, without doing any of this, has recorded fewer deaths per capita than other nations whose governments imposed frightening 1984-style lockdowns, with police stopping citizens and checking receipts to see that the exit from the home was indeed "necessary." Spain in particular put the military in charge of all civilian life, and it remains so. Swedish health authorities have likened its COVID deaths to the number of deaths seen "in a very bad flu season."

• From early estimates of possibly a 94% survival rate, compared to flu which is 99.9%, the revised estimate by the CDC of the COVID survival rate is about 99.8%. This is due to the growing understanding that most cases are asymptomatic and never reported. In the WHO's estimate, 80% of cases show no symptoms, or very mild ones.

• The "novel" coronavirus, as it is relentlessly called in the media, is not exactly novel. According to Dr. Mike Yeadon, former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, at least four strains of coronavirus are currently circulating throughout the human population, most often resulting in the common cold. Dr. Yeadon says many people already have some level of "t-cell" immunity to the coronavirus as a result of exposure to these other strains. The upshot, says Yeadon, is that a threshold for herd immunity to the virus may already have been reached in many populations.

In the scheme of recent diseases afflicting mankind, COVID-19 is simply not very deadly (see chart below.)

• Most importantly for future understanding of "new cases," Dr. Yeadon, who made his now widely-shared remarks on a British Internet radio show, says that coronaviruses characteristically have a single wave, then perhaps a second "ripple." In other words, there will be no second wave. In an appalllingly unreported statement for a scientist as noteworthy as a former Chief Science Officer for Pfizer, Yeadon fretted that the appearance of a second wave could be manufactured by simply reporting the results of extensive COVID testing. Yeadon said all COVID tests presently in use are notoriously unreliable, and tend to produce half, or even "almost all," false positives. This earth-shattering accusation has been met with utter indifference in the media.

The assertions made by Dr. Yeadon and his colleagues with whom he works are shown and dissected in "Former Chief Science Officer for Pfizer Says "Second Wave" Faked on False-Positive COVID Tests, "Pandemic is Over." Yeadon is also a successful entrepreneur with a biotech company of his own.

Dr. Yeadon is one of Neil Ferguson's fiercest critics, saying bluntly in the radio interview that "no serious scientist gives any validity" to Ferguson's model.

Because it did not lock down or order masks, Ferguson predicted Sweden's COVID death count would be 100,000 by June. It is presently under 6,000, with the rate steadily declining.

If the rest of the world truly has a "second wave," but not Sweden, it would indicate that Sweden took the right course by allowing its population to develop immunities, through the body's normal responses. It would mean health authorities who united behind lockdowns and masking were wrong in a way which cost lives.

As Swedish data proves Sweden was right, top epidemiologists are emerging more than ever to call for an end to all lockdown and social distancing among healthy populations, for herd immunity. Notable are a trio from Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford, which has started a signature drive around what they call The Great Barrington Declaration.

The doctor-professors point to the unacceptable rate of suicides, drug overdoses, deferred critical health care, domestic violence, and household economic devastation as among the reasons to abandon measures which were supposed to last 15 days.

It is possible that Sweden might have had an even lower death rate, had mistakes not been made that the Swedish government has admitted to. Admitting error is something other governments have been reluctant to do. As the "new cases" mask, lockdown, and social distancing drives continue, governments if anything are only doubling down, as Swedes walk with open smiles to crowd the nearest pub.

Scenes from Sweden last Summer

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"Michigan got almost $130,000 less per patient than the national average, according to the report, which analyzed CARES Act funds and coronavirus case counts as of April 10....While the national average in federal assistance per patient was $160,286, Michigan’s allotment was just $31,045 per patient."

Becker's Hospital Review, a gem you probably missed, in "State-by-state breakdown of federal aid per COVID-19 case":

"Below is a breakdown of how much funding per COVID-19 case each state will receive from the first $30 billion in aid. Kaiser Health News used a state breakdown provided to the House Ways and Means Committee by HHS along with COVID-19 cases tabulated by The New York Times for its analysis."

Alabama
$158,000 per COVID-19 case

Alaska
$306,000

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