The nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to head up the National Institutes of Health reminds me that there was one country, Sweden, that tried to follow the principles outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration during the Covid pandemic. That is, it tried to protect the elderly while allowing most other people to carry out their day-to-day activities unimpeded.
Bhattacharya, of Stanford University’s Medical School, was one of the leads behind the declaration, which argued for what was usually referred to as “herd immunity.” It drew many co-signers, and plenty of opposition as dangerous fringe science.
How did that work out? I think the results were mixed. Early in the pandemic, 2020, Sweden had more than one and a half times the number of excess deaths – that is, deaths from all causes, including Covid – proportionate to the population than did other Scandinavia countries of Denmark, Finland and Norway. This is to be expected, as few measures were taken in Sweden to reduce the incidence of the disease in the general population.
With the introduction of vaccination in 2022, though, Sweden’s excess death rate was about half the rate of the other Scandinavian countries: It reduced excess deaths while the rate in the other Scandinavian countries increased. This is what the Great Barrington Declaration predicted – that lockdowns and other restrictions at the front end of the epidemic, with “lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health” and so on would result in additional excess deaths when the epidemic was over. It is too early to judge whether this long tail will continue.
Covid deaths in Sweden (as opposed to excess deaths from all causes) over the course of the epidemic from 2020 to this past November showed Sweden doing badly: more than one and a half times as many Covid deaths, proportionate to the population, as in the other Scandinavian countries.
We should note that Scandinavia as a whole, including Sweden, did better than many other European countries and much, much better than the United States, where Covid death rates were higher than those in Scandinavia (leaving out Sweden). At the height of the pandemic, states controlled by Republicans had higher excess death rates than those controlled by Democrats.
If Bhattacharya is confirmed by the Senate, he will lead a $48 billion medical research agency of 27 institutes and centers.
As the threat of a new pandemic (a bird flu crossover to humans) approaches, we need to decide carefully which restrictions over our behavior are necessary and which can be ignored. We must follow the data painfully gained from the recent Covid pandemic.
Martin G. Evans is a writer in Cambridge whose contributions on managerial and political issues have appeared in The Boston Globe, Cambridge Chronicle, MetroWest Daily News, Providence Journal, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail of Toronto, National Post of Toronto and the former Toronto Financial Post. He has taught at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, London Business School, George Mason University, Rutgers University and the Harvard School of Public Health.
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“ We should note that Scandinavia as a whole, including Sweden, did better than many other European countries and much, much better than the United States, where Covid death rates were higher than those in Scandinavia (leaving out Sweden).”
What? This makes absolutely no sense.