SR, Sweden has let the dying begin and has been concurrently expanding its health care capability to manage it. The fact it has higher deaths per capita than neighbours has nothing to do with the immeasurable (at this point) mortality rate from infection which should be less than 0.37% as it is the younger, lower risk, cohort involved. Other Scandinavian countries in lockdown, as here, are aiming for no deaths and herd immunity through vaccination rather than infection (our current governmental reverie, shared by Mr O).

I'd expect some vulnerable non-isolates to be in the early Swedish numbers. The onus is on them to isolate from infection or expect to be put aside at triage to fend for themselves wherever a younger person is competing for the same resources. The reaching of herd immunity in Sweden is planned to be achieved without the vulnerable dying.

I have connections to public hospital medicine here who have told me key staff have been briefed on CV19 triage arrangements. We can't handle the truth apparently, so this isn't public knowledge, which I rail against. If you're over 65 and want a 100% survival chance, may I advise maintaining isolation for the next 18 months or so. I'm an employed 64 y.o. asthmatic with serious choices to make, while bearing in mind infection isn't a guaranteed death sentence for anyone.

Sweden will be in trouble only when it can't manage to moderate infection to match its health-care capacity. It may even need periods of major quarantine, such as weekends here or there on top of normal distancing and cleanliness measures, but it should maintain its overall thrust.

I'm annoyed at the scientific misrepresentation of the supposed failure of the Swedish strategy.

So what if Sweden's per capita death toll is higher now than its locked-down neighbours', who have their own death surges ahead of them after awaiting the coming of a non-existent vaccine. However you peel the onion, the morbidity rate will be the same, or probably less in Sweden as the vulnerable will not come out of quarantine until the immune population grows sufficiently to reach herd immunity.

Posters here sit on the fence over the coming of a vaccine, as 'individual' notes. Sensible policy should not be built on hope and fear. You can't fault the Swedes until they significantly fail to match health-care provision with need, both of which they have control over.

Thank goodness we have a Sweden as a reference point to help us work out, at some future time, what the gold-standard is for response to a pandemic. Those applying inappropriate statistics to scare the public are not a part of that scientific process.

There's a lot of nonsense being talked about Sweden. On a per capita basis its death rate compares well with other European and North American countries https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&country=SWE+USA+GBR+CHE+ITA+ESP+DEU+FRA+CAN+NOR.

It also looks like her curve is flattening and decreasing. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=ITA+ESP+USA+GBR+CAN+SWE+DEU+NOR

Unlike Australia's flattening, it is likely to be sustained because of how widespread the infection must be.

Graham Y,

And when Sweden gets a second wave of the Wuhan virus it can sustain another 10% death rate and a third wave another 10% and ..............................

The Demographic of Sweden is a powder keg on its own & with a bit of COVID-19 thrown in, the whole show is primed to the max !

Dear GrahamY,

Horses for courses if we can old chap. These are the same graphs with the Scandinavian countries selected.

http://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&country=DNK+FIN+NOR+SWE

http://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=NOR+SWE+FIN+DNK

The thing is unlike Denmark which has a land border with a high case load country like Germany, Sweden is only bordered by Finland and Norway, both of which have managed very low mortality figures.

They certainly have squandered that advantage.

Hardly the gold standard at this stage.