Coronavirus: Sweden

There is something instructive about the course of the coronavirus epidemic in Sweden to this point. Sweden has been criticized for its lack of mandated mitigation behaviors. Residents of Sweden are expected to take responsibility for their own health and that of others. Businesses are for the most part still open, and people seem to be taking basic precautions against spreading the disease. The interesting thing is that if one goes to Worldometer and examines the course of the number of cases in Sweden, there is a well-behaved exponential curve with a growth rate of approximately 10% per day. This has been stable over the last 17 days. What is interesting about this is that this rate is below the rate of growth in California (approximately 14%) and slightly above that of Washington state (approximately 9%). It is too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but one may hypothesize that the resistance to spread of the coronavirus in Sweden (assuming the trajectory of new cases remains the same) is approximately the same as that in American states that have enacted "lockdowns." If true this suggests that lockdowns entail little marginal benefit beyond that which involves people observing basic precautions, even going about more-or-less normal business.