People keep making this point, which they think shows the strategy adopted by the Swedish government failed, but this only shows they don't understand it. 1/n https://twitter.com/Raf_Epstein/status/1290088055974502400

The Swedish approach is predicated on the bet that everyone will have to let the epidemic rip eventually, so it's better to achieve herd immunity quickly and therefore minimize economic/social/psychological damage. 2/n

This bet may prove to be wrong, but the fact that Sweden *currently* has more deaths per capita than other countries obviously doesn't show that, because that's baked into the strategy. 3/n

Right now, it looks as though the number of daily COVID-19 deaths in Sweden will soon reach zero, so if the country has reached herd immunity, which nobody knows, the Swedes will more or less be done with the pandemic. 4/n

Meanwhile, the rest of us have no long-term strategy, we're basically hoping for a deus ex machina in the form of a vaccine or a treatment, but we don't know if/when it will come. Otherwise there will probably be a second wave eventually. 5/n

Even if a vaccine can be developed and produced in sufficient quantity within a year, which I seriously doubt, it won't solve the problem unless enough people take it, but this is going to be a hard sell in many places. 6/n

Indeed, after the complete reversal by public health experts/authorities on masks, their double standards on protests, etc., public trust in them is probably very low. Polls also show that many people don't trust a vaccine developed in such a hurry. 7/n

You may think that it's regrettable, but this is how it is and there isn't much we can do to change that. We also can't stay hunkered down forever and eventually people will relax, in many places they already have, at which point the virus will spread again. 8/n

That's why it's just silly to point out that Sweden has more deaths per capita than most countries right now and claim that it shows the Swedes messed up. Perhaps they did, but we won't know until the pandemic is over. 9/n

When it's all over, we may realize that the number of deaths per capita in Sweden is not much higher or perhaps even lower than in countries that took more drastic measures. But even if that's not the case, it won't necessarily mean that the Swedish approach was mistaken. 10/n

Indeed, even if they end up with more deaths per capita, if the economic/social/psychological damage they will have prevented by avoiding lockdowns and other strict measures is large enough, it may have been worth it. 11/n

There is probably a tradeoff here and it's just dumb to deny it. It's not obvious what's the right tradeoff, especially given how much uncertainty there is, but people need to stop making this dumb argument to the effect that Sweden's approach "failed". We don't know that. 12/12