I often put up data comparisons....to start up a discussion.
One of the curious pieces to their national history is the death number from the 1930s (high) to the mid-1950s. Lifestyles improved....medical establishments were in more communities, and sanitation/hygiene got better.
A fair amount of discussion in this period relates to deficiency diseases, better antibiotics, and infectious diseases being erdicated.
Then you go from the mid-1950s....upward, to around 1987. There are varying reasons given on this odd trend.
Some reasons relate to an improving lifestyle, with more cash for booze, drugs, and 'excitement'.
Toss in chronic diseases showing up more....more cancer than in previous generations, and heart-related issues showing up (better lifestyles or more indulgent lifestyles were becoming a problem).
So in the early 1990s....another trend started up (a downward situation). Chief reasons given? More health advice....less fatty food on the table....more emphasis on cutting smoking....etc.
Swedish historians will often chat on the 'old Sweden' versus the 'new Sweden'. It's no longer the 'ugly-sister' of Europe.
Trying to reach some logical conversation on Sweden, comparisons to other European countries and Covid-19?
Well....good luck.
Germans (for years) have jokingly said that Swedes practice social distancing as a routine part of their daily life. It's hard to find Swedes prior to Covid-19 who were within six feet of each other (at least the myth goes this way) and having a conversation.
Swedes will boast over their bout of flu from 1966, or the great flu of 1988, or the 5-star flu of 1993. These personal history lessons are like a short-epic-novel and you generally have to discount half of the story told.
Add to this discussion....roughly 87-percent of the people (10-plus million) live in 1.5-percent of land territory. This means that around 1.3-million of the public live in 98.5 percent of Sweden...the rural side. In an entire day....from this 1.3-million.....'Sven' might only meet twelve people, and he knows all twelve by their first name. So getting Covid-19 might be next to impossible for that 1.3-odd million Swedes.
If you go and pull up the data sheets for individual regions of Sweden? Well....using the statista page....from the top three urban regions, you see the high numbers. Then you get into the lesser regions, and the numbers of infections/deaths drop drastically.
The fact that tourism into Sweden doesn't match up to places like Italy or the UK? Well....yeah, that's another part of this story. You can put the statistical odds of Swedes going out of the country (especially in 2020) and they simply didn't get exposed to the problem like you'd see in France or Spain.
Its an interesting discussion, but it doesn't really go anywhere.
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