Confounding claims by many that its open society approach to coronavirus would spectacularly backfire, Sweden, which didn’t enforce any mandatory lockdown order, has seen its coronavirus cases and deaths slow to a trickle.

Back in March, when Sweden announced that it would adopt a different approach to much of the rest of the world by refusing to shut down its economy and instead aim for herd immunity, public health experts and media commentators were aghast at the decision, warning that the country’s hospitals would be overwhelmed with COVID victims.

Summing up the attitude towards Sweden’s approach, Danish journalist Lisbeth Davidsen said it was “like watching a horror movie.”

Fast forward five months and the horror show predicted by many has completely failed to materialize.

While fears of a “second wave” of coronavirus continue to plague other European countries that completely locked down and enforced draconian face mask rules, Sweden has recorded barely a trickle of COVID cases and deaths so far in August.

Jordan Schachtel drills into the numbers;

In August, Sweden has registered just one death (!) with/from the coronavirus. Yes, you read that correctly. One death so far.

For the month of July, Sweden reported 226 deaths. They’ve accounted for 805 June deaths, 1646 in May, and 2572 in April. The deaths attributed to COVID-19 went from about a 50% reduction to falling off of a cliff.

The story is the same in the hospitals. COVID-19 is hardly registering as a blip on the radar. Sweden has reported just 4 new COVID-19 patients in their ICUs in August. The month of July saw only 52 COVID-19 patients in ICUs.

It doesn’t take a math whiz to come to the conclusion that the epidemic appears to have been wrapped up in Sweden for months. It’s unclear whether this is a result of having achieved the herd immunity threshold, or if the seasonality of the virus is providing indefinite relief. But it’s become absolutely clear that Sweden’s long term pandemic strategy is working.

Asserting that “there is no evidence anywhere in the world that lockdowns or masks have *stopped* the spread of the virus,” Schachtel notes how public health experts “disregarding hundreds of years of proven science on herd immunity” who mandated lockdowns are responsible for the economic catastrophe which the world will now suffer.

As Newsweek acknowledged last week, Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate is lower than those of Spain, the UK and Italy, countries which all imposed lockdowns.

Sweden’s GDP fall of 8.6 in Q2 2020 is also significantly less severe than the 12.1 average experienced in the Eurozone, leaving the Scandinavian country in “much better shape than the rest of Europe.”

As we highlighted yesterday, the lockdowns will plunge at least a hundred million people into extreme poverty.

Add the deaths caused by this to those caused by untreated cancers and other illnesses and we’re looking at deaths caused by lockdown easily outstripping those officially attributed to coronavirus.

So what was the point of lockdown?