The “herd immunity” policy pursued by the Swedish government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has produced a catastrophe. With Sweden’s hospitals overflowing and bodies piling up in morgues, its neighbors Norway and Denmark have offered to step in with emergency aid. More than 7,500 people have died of COVID-19 in Sweden, a country of just 10 million people. Though Sweden has just two-thirds the combined population of its neighbors Norway and Denmark, it has four times as many deaths. This “Swedish model” was advocated by all three of the leading US newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post —as well as much of the international press, and presented a model of how to “balance” the preservation of human life against the needs of the economy.
— source wsws.org | 14 Dec 2020