The numbers don't support a lockdown to prevent Corona - yet

There has been a lot of commotion around Sweden's chosen path to handle Corona, so far not using military force, police and laws to make sure the inhabitants are in their homes and only moving when told and authorized.

So how succesful have the lockdowns been?

• Italy closed March 12th.
• Spain two days later March 14th.
• Denmark and Norway joined the parade March 16th.
• Switzerland March 17th.
• Belgium a day later March 18th.
• Portugal March 19th.
• UK and Germany March 20th.

They all closed down within a week and when looking at the result in terms of number of deaths on average per day one week after their respective close downs we get the graph below.

• The blue staples show the figure for April 4th, i.e. around two to three weeks after.
• The red staples are another two weeks later, April 18th.

As we can see the results differ significantly and it is only Italy that is showing fewer deaths per day on average April 18th, although Spain is close with almost the same number, compared with April 4th.

The others are not close to turning the numbers down yet which is puzzling since it is expected to be 21 days from infection to death for those cases that are mortal. Possibly because the incubation time ranges from 5 to 14 days.

Regardless we see very different outcome from April 4th of April 18th between the other countries, not including France. They had their first death about the same time in early to mid March and still the increase in the average number of deaths per day range from 18% to 135%.

And when comparing these countries with the Netherlands and Sweden that chose a partial lockdown respectively no lockdown we get no clear answer either. In the graph the development is compared with the average lockdown date for the other countries in order to be able to compare.

The Netherlands have an increase of 29% and Sweden 144% which is the same continuum as for the contries that locked down, excluding Spain and Italy which had their first death one month before all others, still not including France.

A good guess is that both Italy and Spain had come close to full effect already with Corona spread in the society when they locked down. It may have been little or no increase if they hadn't locked down. Both countris have numbers around 0,04% dead of the total number of inhabitants which is around half of the expected roof I calculated in March to be around 0,07% based on the figures known then. This can be seen in the graph above.

That implies both Italy and Spain are at the top of the curve and that as many will die further down the road as have so far.

Sweden never locked down but communicated social distancing and particular hand hygiene with the effect of still being well below the figures for France, Belgium and UK but it shouldn't be expected that over time the percentage of dead per million inhabitants will differ, probably it is only a matter of spreading the number over a longer time since 0,07% today seems to be a reasonable number.

It is all about making the inhabitants used to the facts and accept life as it is and setting the expectations.

But at least number of dead per million are quite modest and in the mid-range for both the Netherlands and Sweden even without a lockdown. That is truly interesting and this despite the fact that Sweden has a very unfortunate number of deaths in their homes for the elderly.

Looking into the future countries like Norway, Denmark, Portugal and Germany will see an substantial increase in the death rate when they open up. They will either need to choose destroying their economies and later pay the toll to the Reaper or to kneel at once.