Alone in Europe, it managed to grow its economy by 0.4 percent in the first quarter. One after another, Swedish companies have produced results which have exceeded expectations. There have been few bankruptcies. What’s more, having kept factories and other workplaces open throughout the crisis, the Swedes have an advantage in the recovery. They don’t have a workforce which has lost the habit of working, which enjoyed weeks off in the spring sunshine and is now reluctant to return.

But was it worth all those deaths? The case against Sweden rests on comparisons with its neighbours, Denmark and Norway. On that basis, Sweden looks to have come off badly – its 571 deaths per million residents seems reckless compared with that of Denmark (106) or Norway (47). But then are Denmark and Norway the right comparators?

Sweden has much more significant urban areas compared with Norway, and it has a high number people who take skiing holidays in the Alps – which seems to have been the seat, or one of the main seats, of Covid-19 in Europe. Significantly, Sweden has a lower death rate than many European countries which did go into full lockdown, such as Italy (582), Spain (610), the UK (683) and Belgium (850).

Which countries in Europe have the fewest new cases per capita?
But even if Sweden has suffered a relatively high number of deaths to date, that is not the end of the story. As John Giesecke, Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist and adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO), argued in April we won’t really be able to judge how different countries have performed until the crisis has reached some kind of conclusion, either through a vaccine or the natural decline of the virus. His belief is that, eventually, comparable countries will have similar death rates, but the misery – both health and economic – will be spread out far longer in some than others.

Covid infection rates in Europe
Were an effective vaccine to become available this autumn, then the suppression strategy proposed in Professor Neil Ferguson’s paper of March 16 and followed by most developed countries, will seem wise. But just how long are governments prepared to suppress their economies? The longer a vaccine takes to arrive – and there is no guarantee that a vaccine will ever be approved, even if early trials have been promising – then the more that the Swedish approach will seem appealing.

The disappointing news from Sweden’s point of view is that antibody tests suggest that the country is still far from achieving herd immunity. The country’s Public Health Agency revealed in June that even in Stockholm, the worst-affected place in the country, only 10 percent of the population had antibodies – way short of the 60 to 80 percent which our own chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, suggested would be needed for herd immunity.

Not all scientists are agreed on this, however. Last week, modelling in a yet-to-be published paper by an international group of scientists led by Gabriella Gomes of Strathclyde University claimed that the 60 percent is only applicable where herd immunity is gained through a vaccine programme given randomly to a population. If a virus is allowed to spread naturally, on the other hand, it will affect the more susceptible people first (people who either have fewer natural defences or who have more contacts).

Once this group has been infected, the virus finds it much harder to spread and herd immunity will be reached at a much lower level – when between 10 and 20 percent of the population have been infected. If that is right, Sweden might be far closer to herd immunity than previously believed.

In the meantime, Sweden finds itself with unfamiliar friends and unfamiliar enemies. Thanks to its generous welfare policies it is more often a country praised on the left and condemned by economic liberals. Now it is now the other way around. Ultimately Sweden might just end up pleasing both groups – if, thanks to a less-damaged economy, it emerges as the only country able to avoid deep welfare cuts.