MORE EVIDENCE AGAINST LOCKDOWNS: Explaining Sweden’s Covid Cases. The mortality rate in Sweden, while lower than in the U.S. and Britain, has been higher than in neighboring Nordic countries, which critics claimed was proof that it should have emulated their lockdown policies. But a new analysis points to another explanation: Sweden had far more vulnerable elderly people (“dry tinder,” as researchers call it) than its neighbors because its previous two flu seasons had been milder than theirs. “My results,” Jonas Herby concludes, “illustrate that plain coincidences may be important when understanding the COVID-19-death toll in a country compared to national lockdown policies.” His conclusions jibe with a previous analysis of Sweden and its neighbors.