What it does it mean when people say that the death rate in Sweden is 12%?
12% of what? 12% of all people in Sweden are dead? So 1.2 million people in Sweden are dead? Err, no.
And the talk of Sweden's economy being trashed? Everybody's economy is going to be trashed. Sweden's probably less so because they kept schools open for children aged 16 and under and it made attendance compulsory so parents could continue to work if they wanted, without childcare being a factor for them. They kept cafes, bars, restaurants, shops and even cinemas open, but with social distancing measures in place. The Swedish government made recommendations, they didn't give orders. This is cultural. The same approach would not work in the US or the UK. I don't know enough about Australia.
The talk of COVID survivors needing months of rehabilitation, having to learn to breathe again on their own, having permanent lung damage, and reduced physical capability - let's be really clear, that's not a problem that's unique to Sweden. That's going to affect the entire planet.
Sweden has already gone through, or is currently going through it's second, third, fourth and fifth wave of the virus, if there are going to be waves.
Other countries (I live in the UK so I'm speaking from experience here) are currently soiling their underwear about what may happen as they begin to reopen. People are incredibly nervous about schools reopening and children spreading the virus. What about workplaces where using the internet to work from home isn't an option? Sweden doesn't even need to think about this. I wrote on this thread a while back about going to a large DIY store a few weeks ago here in the UK, and even with "measures" in place, the whole thing was a total nightmare. If that's how the country as a whole id going to act in the coming months, then we will definitely have a second wave of some kind.
The statistics that are really going matter in a few years time are those for all cause mortality, when we can look back, for every country and compare all cause morality numbers for 2020 with those from the previous 10 or 20 years. The country with the least variance has done something right. For example, at the moment the number of burials in Jakarta in Indonesia has gone through the roof but their COVID-19 death rate is fairly low. Hmm. Something fishy going on there. Looking at all cause mortality would highlight this. Looking at COVID-19 related deaths would not.
Right now we don't know with any degree of certainty which countries are reporting deaths that are only guaranteed COVID-19 deaths vs suspected COVID-19 deaths. BIG difference there. That's assuming that it is possible to always tell the difference between those two categories. Put another way, are people dying from COVID-19, or with COVID-19? If they're dying with COVID-19, to what extent did COVID-19 exacerbate existing conditions acting as the "straw that broke the camel's back" rather than the outright cause of death?
We also don't know which countries are only reporting deaths that take place on hospital premises vs also reporting deaths that are happening in care homes and the "community" i.e. people dying in their own homes. Some countries are probably adopting one approach in one region and the other approach in another region.
In the same way that the true number of infections isn't known, but estimated to be, I don't know, 10 times higher than the latest figures suggest, we can't even look at the numbers of deaths for each country and make accurate comparisons between them.
In the UK there is at least a 5 day lag between someone dying and their death being reported. There's another factor to take into account.
I'm definitely more interested in deaths than infections, and definitely more interested in trends over time than static numbers, but all these numbers are inaccurate and potentially misleading.