How much can Denmark teach us today about the natural course of the pandemic and the effects of human interventions?
A lot. But let’s start at the beginning.
Long ago, when the world was convinced that stubborn, unlocked-down Sweden was performing a deadly Covid experiment, I explored mortality statistics in the Nordic countries. My first analysis (June 2020, published in Hebrew) was titled ‘Lockdown and Covid mortality: refutations from Sweden’. At that time Covid mortality in Sweden was about five times higher than in Denmark.
In my second analysis of the topic (January 2021, on Twitter), I compared flu, Covid and all-cause mortality in Denmark and Sweden. Over three consecutive ‘flu years’ (October through September), Sweden fared better than Denmark on flu mortality (pre-pandemic), worse on Covid mortality (when flu was absent), and better or similar to Denmark on overall mortality. My analysis was based on data through September 2020.