A humanist looks at Sweden v. Covid

For us numbers nerds, here’s an interesting thread from Daniel Hadas, a medieval Latin professor in London who describes himself as a “Catholic humanist”… “Some remarks on Covid and Sweden.”:

… what matters is that life in Sweden during Covid continued largely as normal.

Lockdowns are deeply unnatural. They do not happen without intense social pressure, whether it be through legislation or propaganda. That pressure was absent, or at least muted, in Sweden.
At this point, it is customary to start arguing about statistics. Anti-lockdowners point to Sweden’s low excess mortality. Pro-lockdowners point to the number of Covid deaths, or to unfavourable comparisons with some of Sweden’s neighbours.
But there is no need to look at statistics to draw the essential conclusion about Sweden’s response. Any innumerate peasant can draw it, and indeed it is only those whose sense-making relies on statistics who can think some more potent conclusion lies hidden in them.
The essential conclusion is: 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥. Sweden’s health system did not “collapse”, whatever that means. Stockholm does not look like Athens after the plague. Sweden is as Sweden was.

No numbers are needed to prove this.

In other words, numbers nerds like me are useless!

Thus Sweden, like every other jursidiction that did little in response to Covid, gives the lie to all the modellers and panic-mongers who screamed at the public that there was 𝘯𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 to shutting down society, that every extreme measure taken was not enough.

Maybe Hadas disdains numbers because he can’t think with numbers? Actually he can!

It is ludicrous to maintain that, via statistics, certainty can be established on the causal link between a country’s anti-Covid measures, and the number of deaths in that country. The system we are trying to analyze is vastly complex: the whole of society, over several years. The potentially confounding variables are therefore countless. The effects being sought are small.

I made the following point back in 2020, but he does it more succinctly and eloquently. The majority of Americans assumed that a society with a lower Covid-tagged death rate was superior to a society with a higher Covid-tagged death rate. But that can be true only with some value judgments.

… behind the policy language of “a country’s response to Covid” lie questions for each individual: Should I lock up my children for 23 hours a day? Should I leave my parents to die alone? Should I not touch another man or woman for months on end? … The answer to these questions is not to be found in numbers.

The Swedish response to Covid was right, because, or in as much as, Swedes answered such questions in the negative. The only true disaster threatening us in the Covid years was answering them in the affirmative.

Maybe more people should study medieval Latin!

And because I’m not a humanist, but a numberist, let’s check the numbers:

and here’s the curve (of excess deaths) for Ireland (picked as a comparison country for Sweden by the NYT):