Recently many politicians and other people have been claiming that Sweden’s death rate was unaffected by Coronavirus despite their controversial decision to keep restrictions looser than almost anywhere in the world while chasing herd immunity.
Statistics Sweden (scb.se) have freely downloadable and comprehensive datasets on a wide range of national statistics. Included are data on the reported date of death of every person who dies within their country.
The table below shows the dates (from 1 Jan 2015 to 31 Dec 2020) corresponding to the 50 deadliest days over that 6 year (~2200 day) period.
What do we see? 41 of the deadliest 50 days of the last 6 years were all in 2020. 24 of the top 25 deadliest days were all in 2020!
The chart above is from scb.se themselves, and compares the five year trend of daily deaths in Sweden to what happened during 2020. Two clear peaks are shown corresponding to the two waves of Coronavirus experienced by Sweden in 2020.