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The total death rate in Sweden decreased relatively sharply during the year from July 2018 to July 2019, from approximately 17.5 to 16.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. Norway also experienced some decline during that period, but not by much.
This, according to the researchers Behind the study not yet examined, to be able to explain that many more have died with covid-19 in Sweden. In other words, more Swedes would have been living on “borrowed” time and therefore more vulnerable to the virus.
– One of the common mistakes people make, who do not know epidemiology, is that they choose too short a time to compare, says Michael Bretthauer, a doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Oslo and one of the authors of the study, to Aftonbladet.
– In fact, last year was an exceptional year in Sweden, with unusually low mortality. Many people who would have died last year received an additional year. When a new illness came, it took many who were already working overtime, so to speak. It does not explain the whole difference between Norway and Sweden, but between 40 and 60 percent.
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell himself has expressed similar thoughts. If many people die from the flu in the winter, fewer people will die in heat waves next summer, he reasoned in an interview with DN earlier this fall.
– What has now been seen is that countries that have had a fairly low mortality in their influencers in the last two, three years, such as Sweden, have a very high excess mortality in covid-19. While those that had a high mortality rate from influenza, such as Norway, during the last two winters, have a fairly low mortality from covid, Tegnell said.
The unpublished study provides some support for Tegnell’s theory of the difference in mortality between countries in recent years.
Photo: Janerik Henriksson / TT, Janerik Henriksson / TT
Anders Tegnell got both then criticism and support for his statement. Joacim Rocklöv, professor of epidemiology and public health at Umeå University, told Svenska Dagbladet that the difference in mortality rates in previous years between countries may not be statistically significant and the Norwegian equivalent of Tegnell, Frode Forland, He agreed:
– From what we can see, it is not the flu that is behind the big difference between Sweden and Norway, he said in an interview with DN.
The new Norwegian study has yet to be published in a scientific journal and therefore the results must be interpreted with caution.
