Sweden didn’t do nearly as much as other countries to prevent coronavirus infections in 2020, yet its year turned out to be rather average in overall mortality, even arguably better than average when you consider conditions just before the pandemic hit.

Sweden’s 2020 death toll from all causes now stands at 97,941, which is just 1.4 percent above the population-adjusted death toll for 2015, and just 3.8 percent above the population-adjusted average death toll for the five previous years, 2015 through 2019.

Sweden’s “excess mortality” for 2020 was thus just 3,625. That’s less than half of the 8,727 official “covid deaths” for the year. So even if covid were to blame for all 8,727 official “covid deaths” (which is doubtful), the overall impact of covid on Sweden was rather minor and nowhere near the disaster once predicted and now smugly assumed by Sweden’s covidious critics. 

Covid didn’t make 2020 the stand-out year among the past six for mortality in Sweden. No, that honor goes to 2019. For unknown reasons, mortality in 2019 was anomalously low—5.8 percent below the 2015-2018 average. Had 2019 been an average year, 5,500 more elderly Swedes would have died that year. 

That explains why so many Swedes died in 2020: A year later, the 5,500 Swedes who would have died in 2019 were older and sicker and even more vulnerable to a lot of things, not just covid. So deaths in Sweden were bound to be higher in 2020 even without covid.

When you take that fact into account, 2020 turns out to have been a fairly good year for Sweden, even a better-than-average year, because the 5,500 in pent-up mortality from 2019 more than accounts for Sweden’s 3,625 “excess” deaths in 2020.

Without that extra 5,500 from 2019, Sweden would have seen fewer deaths in 2020 than in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.