Sweden has a socially distancing culture, just naturally. Plus huge amounts of Swedes already work from home. And with excellent health care, they are healthier than Ameticans. So if we had done no lockdowns like what the Swedes did, we would have an even higher death rate than Sweden. The US death rate is 275 per 1 MIllion population. Our death rate is 20% lower than Sweden's right now. That is not insignificant. If we had not shut down, I am sure it would have been much higher than Sweden's. Our shutdown saved lives, it just got started a little late. The US could've prevented 90% of our deaths by shutting down two weeks earlier. https://futurism.com/scientists-prevented-deaths-shutting-down-earlier As we open up, we could easily surpass Sweden's death rate, if we don't do mass testing and contact tracing.
Alas, Trump wasted our lockdown time by failing to gear up testing and contact tracing. Now we will open up without those safeguards and Covid-19 will spread like wildfire in the US. So we'll have the worst of both worlds: a ruined economy and a massive death toll. South Korea was able to avoid both. Their early mass testing and contact tracing avoided the need for any lockdowns. They were able to quarantine just the infected. Their restaurants and factories stayed open. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/26/821688981/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down South Korea has lost only 262 people. That's a death rate of just 5.1 per 1 Million population. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/
Granted our population is 6.5 times South Korea's, but if we had done what South Korea did, our death total today would be 6.5×262=1,703, instead of 90,000. And our economy wouldnt be in tatters.
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