LETTER: Sweden is no COVID response model

In its Wednesday editorial, the Review-Journal lauded Sweden as now a model of how to fight COVID-19 with minimal restrictions. Really? Let’s do some basic math.

Sweden is a country of 10.1 million people and, as of last week, had almost 5,900 deaths from COVID-19. If you took that rate proportionally to the U.S. population of 328 million, we would have more than 192,000 deaths. Wait a minute: That’s pretty close to the 210,000 deaths we already have.

Maybe we have been doing the Swedish model all along, and our country has been paying for it with thousands of people dying and millions of infections. Maybe we should look at other countries such as Germany and follow what they have done — stronger shutdowns — and if we had, the United States would have more than 150,000 more people alive right now.