The lockdown effect: A counterfactual for Sweden

Born, Benjamin; Dietrich, Alexander; Müller, Gernot

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0249732

Cited by 105 publications

(126 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“… 3 There are three other papers that use Sweden’s exceptional approach to NPIs as a source of variation. Born et al ( 2021 ) and Cho ( 2020 ) use the synthetic control method to compare Sweden to other European countries. A relative disadvantage of their approach is that they match on the number of cases, which is in part driven by time- and country-level variation in the testing regime, both of which are substantial.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the demand for health care and on mortality: evidence from COVID-19 in Scandinavia

Juranek

Zoutman

2021

J Popul Econ

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We study the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) against COVID-19 on the allocation of scarce resources in the hospital sector in Scandinavia. Denmark and Norway imposed strict NPIs, but Sweden followed an extraordinarily lenient approach. We use an event study to compare COVID-19 hospitalizations, intensive-care (ICU) patients, and deaths in Sweden with Denmark and Norway. The outcome variables initially follow a common trend, but diverge 2–3 weeks after lockdown. Both the timing of the effect and the similarity in the trend between Denmark and Norway are highly consistent with a causal effect of the lockdown. We use our event study to build a counterfactual model that predicts the outcome variables for Denmark and Norway if they had followed Sweden’s approach. In the absence of strict NPIs, the peak number of hospitalizations would have been 2.5 (3.5) times as large in Denmark (Norway). Overall, Denmark (Norway) would have had 334 (671) percent more hospital-patient days, 277 (379) percent more ICU-patient days, and 402 (1015) percent more deaths. The benefit of lockdown in terms of healthcare and mortality costs amounts to between 1 and 4 (0.9 and 3.5) percent of GDP in Denmark (Norway).

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confidence: 99%

The effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the demand for health care and on mortality: evidence from COVID-19 in Scandinavia

Juranek

Zoutman

2021

J Popul Econ

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“…Fang et al (2020) find that the lockdown of Wuhan reduced mobility within, into, and out of Wuhan significantly. Born et al (2020) find that the decline in mobility in Sweden was only slightly lower than in a synthetic control group comprising countries that had a more stringent lockdown. Chen et al (2020) also find that trends in electricity usage between March and April 2020 was broadly similar across Nordic economies, including Sweden.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…For example, Conyon et al (2020) compare Denmark's and Norway's lockdown measures in a difference-in-difference model to Sweden's approach and find that stricter lockdown policies in Sweden would have been associated with fewer Covid-19 deaths. By contrast, Born et al (2020) use a synthetic counterfactual for Sweden which is a weighted average of other European countries to conclude that Covid-19 infections and deaths would not have been significantly different in Sweden under a lockdown.…”

Section: Figure 2 Number Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the Economic Effects of Pandemic Containment Policies? Evidence from Sweden

2020

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This paper examines the economic effects of policies to contain Covid-19, by extracting lessons from Sweden’s experience during the ‘Great Lockdown’. Sweden’s approach was less stringent and based more on social responsibility than legal obligations compared to European peers. First, we provide an account of Sweden’s strategy and the health outcomes. Second, drawing on a range of data sources and empirical findings, our analysis of the first Covid-19 wave indicates that a less stringent strategy can soften the economic impact initially. These benefits could be eroded subsequently, due to potentially higher infection rates and a prolonged pandemic, but in Sweden’s case, the evidence remains mixed in this regard, and it is premature to judge the outcome of Sweden’s containment strategy. In addition, the economic effects of the containment strategy also depend on social behavior, demographics and structural features of the economy, such as the degree of export orientation, reliance on global supply chains, and malleability to remote working.

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“…Notably, Luxembourg and Ireland, which had relatively low CMRs, ranked higher, with AMTRs higher than 1500/million (1802 and 1562/million, respectively) due to the young age distribution of their underlying populations. Sweden witnessed a steep increase in mortality during the first wave, comparable to the increase in the UK, probably as result of not implementing and social distancing measures 37 . In this category, the Netherlands succeeded best in keeping the second wave under control, despite e relatively high first wave.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the COVID-19 pandemic in space and over time in Europe, using numbers of deaths, crude rates and adjusted mortality trend ratios

Gallo

Chiodini

Bruzzese

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Comparison of COVID-19 trends in space and over time is essential to monitor the pandemic and to indirectly evaluate non-pharmacological policies aimed at reducing the burden of disease. Given the specific age- and sex- distribution of COVID-19 mortality, the underlying sex- and age-distribution of populations need to be accounted for. The aim of this paper is to present a method for monitoring trends of COVID-19 using adjusted mortality trend ratios (AMTRs). Age- and sex-mortality distribution of a reference European population (N = 14,086) was used to calculate age- and sex-specific mortality rates. These were applied to each country to calculate the expected deaths. Adjusted Mortality Trend Ratios (AMTRs) with 95% confidence intervals (C.I.) were calculated for selected European countries on a daily basis from 17th March 2020 to 29th April 2021 by dividing observed cumulative mortality, by expected mortality, times the crude mortality of the reference population. These estimated the sex- and age-adjusted mortality for COVID-19 per million population in each country. United Kingdom experienced the highest number of COVID-19 related death in Europe. Crude mortality rates were highest Hungary, Czech Republic, and Luxembourg. Accounting for the age-and sex-distribution of the underlying populations with AMTRs for each European country, four different patterns were identified: countries which experienced a two-wave pandemic, countries with almost undetectable first wave, but with either a fast or a slow increase of mortality during the second wave; countries with consistently low rates throughout the period. AMTRs were highest in Eastern European countries (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland). Our methods allow a fair comparison of mortality in space and over time. These might be of use to indirectly estimating the efficacy of non-pharmacological health policies. The authors urge the World Health Organisation, given the absence of age and sex-specific mortality data for direct standardisation, to adopt this method to estimate the comparative mortality from COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

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The lockdown effect: A counterfactual for Sweden

Cited by 105 publications

References 24 publications

The effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the demand for health care and on mortality: evidence from COVID-19 in Scandinavia

The effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the demand for health care and on mortality: evidence from COVID-19 in Scandinavia

What are the Economic Effects of Pandemic Containment Policies? Evidence from Sweden

Comparing the COVID-19 pandemic in space and over time in Europe, using numbers of deaths, crude rates and adjusted mortality trend ratios

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