Covid Scorecard: Excess Deaths 2020-22

Covid Scorecard: Excess Deaths 2020-22. By David Evans.

There are some silly and blatantly wrong numbers floating around that purport to show Sweden did better than anyone with covid — but they are just ideologically-inspired nonsense. See “Sweden Wins!“, which gives no source for its figures, and the accompanying lame defence/apology/walkback here.

So I looked up the data here and here, and did the calculations for an assortment of countries:

Excess Deaths Population (m) Excess Deaths per million pop Covid deaths per million pop
China           656,675 1448.0              454                  4 Not credible
Mali              13,496 21.5              629                35 Ivermectin
Singapore                4,718 5.9              794             287
Taiwan              19,844 23.9              831             608 Closed borders
Australia              23,280 26.1              893             624 Closed borders
Denmark                5,385 5.8              923          1,295
Japan           126,118 125.6          1,004             403
South Korea              57,672 51.3          1,124             601
Israel        5,424,502 9.3          1,488             1,274
Sweden              16,641 10.2          1,629          2,064
Somalia              31,488 16.8          1,870                81
Thailand           140,569 70.1          2,006             475
France           137,861 65.6          2,102          2,430
Germany           189,685 83.9          2,261          1,890
Vietnam           224,658 99.0          2,270             436 Closed borders
Indonesia           780,193 279.1          2,795             573 Some ivermectin
United Kingdom           191,538 68.5          2,796          2,880
United States        1,277,204 334.8          3,815          3,309
India        5,424,502 1406.0          3,858             377 Some ivermectin
South Africa           278,902 60.8          4,591          1,686 Some ivermectin
Russia        1,342,287 145.8          9,206          2,691

Excess death figures are uncertain estimates, and of course the covid death figures are often inaccurate too.

But no, Sweden didn’t win, by any measure. Considering that they have a headstart by being the country where the most people live alone — most covid is caught at home — they did about on par with the other western countries that didn’t close their borders and went the vaccine route.

No super obvious lessons here, but tentatively:

  • Closing borders helped (by avoiding original and delta, with mass exposure only to omicron).
  • Ivermectin helped, especially preventatively, but India, Indonesia and South Africa only used it partially.
  • Strong lockdowns worked in Asia.
  • Smaller countries (i.e. less population) did better.

Australia is an interesting case because it mostly kept out original covid and delta, is the most heavily vaccinated country, and vaccinated before covid spread — many of its excess deaths are indisputably from vaccines.

There is no data on costs, so the cost-benefit balance of the various strategies cannot be assessed from this sort of analysis.