Sweden, Which Never Had Lockdown, Covid Cases Plummet as Rest of Europe Suffers

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countri...

That makes the headline very misleading, much like cheering about a company's stock rebounding while ignoring the precipitous fall that had preceded it (sometimes called a "dead cat bounce").

So it seems like they've found up with "herd immunity" relative to the defensive measures that were taken. Which is to say they don't have unconditional herd immunity. If they get Covid slowly down to a very rare rate (and Covid is decline there quite slowly[1]) and normal activity returns, one or another "super-spread events" could reignite the epidemic in a similar fashion to other places where it's been eliminated currently though with the relative immunity perhaps slowing it a little.

[1] https://cv19info.live/sweden/ Look at new cases in log scale. Sweden's cases have declined but extremely slooooowly. 23 deaths a couple of days ago where the high was 172. That a low rate of decline which indicates Covid will be there quite a while.

Denmark, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland

COMBINED.

Additionally, we generally are seeing reduced cases in cooler climates at the moment and increases in warmer climates. The reverse of which was true in the late winter and spring.

My personal theory is that air conditioning in the heat and heating in the cold with the increased likelihood that clusters of people are inside enjoying these amenities leads to more cases. My prediction is that the warmer places with high case loads will taper off in the fall and rising case loads will return to the colder regions.

First off, it attaches a special significance to the end of June as a turning point, but Sweden was late in deploying widespread testing of the general population, so that’s mostly due to the expanded testing around that time. In Stockholm it is well established that the peak was mid April. Other parts of Sweden have a different story, with some regions tracking Stockholm in the progression, while some are still quite early in the curve. For instance, the southern region of Scania seems to track closer to Denmarks pattern even though transits were largely shut down in March.

Another error is the claim that the strategy was to achieve herd immunity. The line has always been that the actions taken should be sustainable in the long term. As a resident of Stockholm, I can tell you that life here changed massively in March, and it’s far from a normal summer with all concerts being cancelled, amusement parks being shut, parades and festivals being cancelled etc. That said, I’ve seen few people argue that the measures are too draconian and should be dropped. (There was a major debate about the recommendations around domestic travel during the summer, which eventually resulted in the authorities saying that they no longer discouraged it. They released a rather interesting paper where they modelled the consequences of internal travel.)

In general, I think it’s too early to draw conclusions from comparisons between countries. The end result will depend on things like the impact of seasonal forcing on the contagiom, the availability of vaccines, the willingness of the population in other countries to accept renewed lockdowns, the feasibility of contact tracing schemes etc. I do however think it’s fair to say that Sweden failed mainly in protective measures around elderly care, and that the actions taken made sense in the particularly Swedish case.

Current title doesn't clearly indicate that Sweden has plummeting covid cases