By rejecting lockdowns, Sweden avoided a great deal of economic and educational damage, while maintaining low death rate

Public health “experts” claimed Sweden would be devastated when it kept schools and workplaces open during the pandemic, rather than imposing lockdowns. But it wasn’t.

As Johan Norberg of the Cato Institute notes, Sweden ended up with a much lower death rate than most European countries, as well as avoiding the big learning loss of many countries, and avoiding the harsh recessions experienced by some countries (even though Sweden’s export-oriented economy is more vulnerable to pandemic-caused recessions than many other countries’ economies).

As Norberg notes, “Sweden did better than other countries when it comes to school results and economic performance. That was to be expected as Sweden was one of few countries where schools and workplaces remained open. More surprisingly, Sweden also did better than most western countries on health outcomes. Remarkably, Sweden had one of the lowest excess mortality rates during the three pandemic years 2020–22 – less than half of America’s. It seems like voluntary adaptation to the pandemic worked better than most people expected, and it suggests that it was not Sweden but the lockdown countries that engaged in an unprecedented experiment, depriving millions of their freedom without a discernible benefit to public health.”