Covid-19: Does Sweden have herd immunity?

Guest Post by Sebastian Rushworth M.D.

Covid is over in Sweden. No sign of it on the front pages of newspapers.

At the beginning of August I wrote an article about my experiences working as an emergency physician in Stockholm, Sweden during the covid pandemic. For those who are unaware, Sweden never went in to full lockdown. Instead, the country imposed a partial lockdown that was almost entirely voluntary. People with office jobs were recommended to work from home, and people in general were recommended to avoid public transport unless necessary. Those who were over 70 years old, or who had serious underlying conditions, were recommended to limit social contacts.

The only forcible restriction imposed by the government from the start was a requirement that people not gather in groups of more than 50 at a time. After it became clear that covid was above all dangerous to people in nursing homes, an additional restriction was placed on nursing home visits. At no time has there been any requirement on people to wear face masks in public. Restaurants, cafés, hairdressers, and shops have stayed open throughout the pandemic. Pre-schools and schools for children up to the age of 16 have stayed open, while schools for children ages 16-19 switched to distance learning.

My personal experience is that people followed the voluntary restrictions pretty well at the beginning, but that they have become increasingly lax as time has gone on. As a personal example, my mother and my parents-in-law stayed locked up in their homes for the first six weeks or so of the pandemic. After that they couldn’t bear to be away from their grandchildren any longer.

In my earlier article in August, I mentioned that after an initial peak that lasted for a month or so, from March to April, visits to the Emergency Room due to covid had been declining continuously, and deaths in Sweden had dropped from over 100 a day at the peak in April, to around five per day in August.

At the point in August when I wrote that article, I hadn’t seen a single covid patient in over a month. I speculated that Sweden had developed herd immunity, since the huge and continuous drop was happening in spite of the fact that Sweden wasn’t really taking any serious measures to prevent spread of the infection.

So, how have things developed in the six weeks since that first article?

Well, as things stand now, I haven’t seen a single covid patient in the Emergency Room in over two and a half months. People have continued to become ever more relaxed in their behaviour, which is noticeable in increasing volumes in the Emergency Room. At the peak of the pandemic in April, I was seeing about half as many patients per shift as usual, probably because lots of people were afraid to go the ER for fear of catching covid. Now volumes are back to normal.

When I sit in the tube on the way to and from work, it is packed with people. Maybe one in a hundred people is choosing to wear a face mask in public. In Stockholm, life is largely back to normal. If you look at the front pages of the tabloids, on many days there isn’t a single mention of covid anywhere. As I write this (19th September 2020) the front pages of the two main tabloids have big spreads about arthritis and pensions. Apparently arthritis and pensions are currently more exciting than covid-19 in Sweden.

In spite of this relaxed attitude, the death rate has continued to drop. When I wrote the first article, I wrote that covid had killed under 6,000 people. How many people have died now, six weeks later? Actually, we’re still at under 6,000 deaths. On average, one to two people per day are dying of covid in Sweden at present, and that number continues to drop.

In the hospital where I work, there isn’t a single person currently being treated for covid. In fact, in the whole of Stockholm, a county with 2,4 million inhabitants, there are currently only 28 people being treated for covid in all the hospitals combined. At the peak, in April, that number was over 1,000. If 28 people are currently in hospital, out of 2,4 million who live in Stockholm, that means the odds of having a case of covid so severe that it requires in-hospital treatment are at the moment about one in 86,000.

Since March, the Emergency Room where I work has been divided in to a “covid” section and a “non-covid” section. Anyone with a fever, cough, or sore throat has ended up in the covid section, and we’ve been required to wear full personal protective equipment when interacting with patients in that section. Last Wednesday the hospital shut down the covid section. So few true cases of covid are coming through the Emergency Room that it no longer makes sense to have a separate section for covid.

What about the few formal restrictions that were imposed early in the pandemic? The restriction on visits to nursing homes is going to be lifted from October 1st. The older children, ages 16-19, who were engaging in distance learning during part of the spring, are now back in school, seeing each other and their teachers face to face. The Swedish public health authority has recommended that the government lift the restriction on gatherings from 50 people to 500 people.

When I wrote my first article, I engaged in speculation that the reason Sweden seemed to be developing herd immunity, in spite of the fact that only a minority had antibodies, was due to T-cells. Since I wrote that article, studies have appeared which support that argument. This is good, because T-cells tend to last longer than antibodies. In fact, studies of people who were infected with SARS-CoV-1 back in 2003 have found that they still have T-cells seventeen years after being infected. This suggests that immunity is long lasting, and probably explains why there have only been a handful of reported cases of re-infection with covid, even though the virus has spent the last nine months bouncing around the planet infecting many millions of people.

As to the handful of people who have been reported to have been re-infected. Almost all those cases have been completely asymptomatic. That is not a sign of waning immunity, as some claim. In fact it is the opposite. It shows that people develop a functioning immunity after the first infection, which allows them to fight off the second infection without ever developing any symptoms.

So, if Sweden already has herd immunity, what about other countries? How close are they to herd immunity? The places that have experienced a lot of covid infections, like England and Italy, have mortality curves that are very similar to Sweden’s, in spite of the fact that they went in to lockdown. My interpretation is that they went in to lockdown too late for it to have any noticeable impact on the spread of the disease. If that is the case, then they have likely also developed herd immunity by now. Which would make the ongoing lockdowns in those countries bizarre.

What about the vaccine? Will it arrive in time to make a difference? As I mentioned in my first article, lockdown only makes sense if you are willing to stay in lockdown until there is an effective vaccine. Otherwise you are merely postponing the inevitable. At the earliest, a vaccine will be widely available at some point in the middle of next year. How many governments are willing to keep their populations in lockdown until then? And what if the vaccine is only 30% effective? Or 50%? Will governments decide that is good enough for them to end lockdown? Or will they want to stay in lockdown until there is a vaccine that is at least 90% effective? How many years will that take?

So, to conclude: Covid is over in Sweden. We have herd immunity. Most likely, many other parts of the world do too, including England, Italy, and parts of the US, like New York. And the countries that have successfully contained the spread of the disease, like Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, and Australia, are going to have to stay in lockdown for at least another year, and possibly several years, if they don’t want to develop herd immunity the natural way.

You might also be interested in watching the interview I did with Sky News about covid-19 or reading my article about the role of vitamin D in treating covid-19.

I am rolling out a ton of new science-backed content over the coming months, including:

– Analyses of the benefits and risks of all common supplements and medications
– The keys to a longer, healthier life (possibly quite different from what you may have heard)
– A long-term follow-up of the health consequences of the covid pandemic and global lockdown.

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musket
musket

Either herd immunity or the herd disposed of the classless clowns early……

Austrian Peter

Great article thanks Doc. We get almost nothing on Sweden in the UK MSM – ‘THEY’ don’t want us to know. My take is that our idiot politicians panicked, listening to the WHO, and now they are locked into an impossible cycle that they can’t get out of, and have destroyed the economy at the same time.

Remarkable – they have achieved what even the Germans, with all their weaponry, where unable to do in 5 years of war! And even then, Sweden very sensibly avoided the conflict. I have a high regard for the integrity of the Swedes, and being of Viking stock myself, I am proud of the resilience of my tribe – Bravo – voices in the wilderness.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

Hey, Austrian Peter, have you watched the YouTube channel of another British guy called “Socks with Sandals?” I enjoy his channel. He lost his IT business due to the lockdowns and has been living in a van and started documenting his experiences. He’s now out of money and has to find a “coronavirus heroes job” so he can buy food. I recommend his channel. He has a sense of humor and is actually a very learned man.

Austrian Peter

Many thanks for the heads-up VV, I haven’t heard of him, so I will Google as usual, only I use DuckDuckGo these days. 🙂 …..mins later: Oh, he’s a young guy – I’ll spend some time with him.

There have been so many casualties of this stupid lockdown. We have been doing all our best to help people in distress around here so I hope he is in our part of the world. We don’t travel so well these days – eyesight and stuff is failing.

And now this awful winter is approaching it will be getting dark at 4 pm and we won’t see the sun again until 8 am – it’s not good for my mental health! We long for South Africa but it’s in a fustercluck of all sorts of crap so we are marooned here, prisoners on a sh**ty little island.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I believe Socks with Sandals is in southern England. He just left Wales because he had to have the MOT on his van renewed and it failed.

Maybe you could purchase one of those lamps that mimic sunlight to use during the winter time. It’s supposed help with mental health, especially seasonal depression due to lack of sunlight. I’m sure you could find one online.

Austrian Peter

Thanks VV – you are course very right as I do suffer SAD and I have promised myself that I will get one. Many here speak highly of it but it seems so artificial somehow – sort of replacing nature. What I really need to do is get the F**K out and go south pronto – which I actually did in 2000 and ended up in Cape Town (another story).

Everything is collapsing in front of our very eyes these days – my Letter this week will cover all the isht. These Brits are truly crazy – must be the weather or living 50 deg north of the equator – we are almost on the arctic circle – only you wouldn’t know it ‘cos the Gulf Stream keeps us temperate and plants grow like crazy in the spring/summer.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I know the lamp seems unnatural but one thing you can do is put the lamp next to a window, pointing it at you, and then sit at the window and watch nature as the light spectrum gives you that sunlight-type boost. Maybe that would help you get over the unnaturalness. Even in winter, it would be good if you could sit outside and at least let the sun (when it’s out) touch your face for about 15 minutes. Doing both would be even better. 🙂
I’ll be looking forward to your letter this week.

Austrian Peter

Great suggestions VV – thanks a million 🙂

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

The other option is to live according to the seasonal aspects of the place where you reside. In Winter we go to bed earlier, sleep longer. During Summer we rise before the sunrise, work until it’s too hot, rest mid-day, resume work until dark, fall asleep exhausted and start over.

I can’t say it’s a fact, but SAD seems to affect people who cling to a 8 hour day/40 hour week schedule and who primarily spend their waking hours indoors under artificial light. It screws up our natural cycles.

I have also noticed that sleep cycles disturbances are primarily experienced during the equinox periods when light and darkness are fairly equal. Not sure why that it is but my entire family goes through it every Spring and Fall.

Austrian Peter

Excellent advice dear HS. But here on this island we don’t see the sun from Oct – March; it is cold, damp, grey and foreboding 90% of the time and if the sun does appear then it is such a weak affair, it dims the spirit to see it. And we often don’t get a summer at all!

On this sad little island we have no resources to speak of. Just a little coal – deep down, a dribble of oil left in the North Sea, some tin in Cornwall and gold somewhere in Scotland that nobody talks about.

We ‘earn’ our living by trading on our wits and selling houses to each other. You never see your neighbour from one month to another. Actually we met a new one the other day and she said she had lived nearby for 15 years – we’ve been here for a devastating 11 years.

After spending 10 years in Cape Town, on 35 deg S latitude, when the day/night regime is mostly equal, I got used to it very quickly and revelled in 8 months of sun and apart from some local you-know-who, all was well in the world.

Coming back to UK was a shock of immense proportions for me because I had always hated the place, even as a child, and couldn’t wait to go south. Having finally achieved my goal, it was short-lived, because I was unable to afford the medical costs as I aged in South Africa – the NHS was the only option for vets of my generation.

So there you have it- grin and bear it, and do as VV suggests and get a sun-ray lamp!

TN Patriot
TN Patriot

Thanks for the Animal’s video. That was our Sr. theme, 50 years ago.

Austrian Peter

TNP – Reminds me of back in the day 🙂

TN Patriot
TN Patriot

Peter – After watching/listening, it went to For What It’s Worth, reminding me of what is happening throughout the world today.
History seems to be rhyming.

Austrian Peter

Yep TNP, nothing new under the sun. Back in ‘The World’, we keep on doing the same old things and expecting a different result – Einstein was right about that, if indeed it was his quote.

morongobill
morongobill

For some reason, YT had his site buried. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa54PZdwVlKn_YuQNfSdsxQ

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

Here’s one that plays right into that. Pretty scary. don’t take the vaccine.

Anonymous
Anonymous

oh but the politicians on the one hand absolutely cannot admit that this was not really about a virus anyway, nor can they even admit that they went off the deep end with ‘measures’ regarding a virus, and so instead they double down and try to arrest anyone who questions them

card802
card802

This is a great article, and just goes to prove that “science” is not settled but still learning and that the people in charge, like Fauci, are really fools who want nothing other than to remain in charge, in the spotlight, and make more money.

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