you said “There was no Swedish “lockdown”.”
That’s not quite correct — there was no forced lockdown. The public health authority has recommended as in other countries social distancing. This resulted for example that within days the majority of office workers started working from home. The same authority stresses the importance of isolating the elderly so they do not get sick. Many with older parents as I are shopping for them and leaving their groceries at the door so they do not have to go grocery shopping.
So although Sweden has not formally decided any lockdown measures in reality they are in effect
Sweden is about the size of Ohio in population (and California in area). The population density and populations themselves are definitely different. But for the sake of argument, let’s compare the infection and death rates in Sweden and Ohio and Cali as of today, May 15, 2020.
State/Ctry population deaths deaths/million
Cali 39.6 million 3,052 deaths 77 deaths/million
Ohio 11.6 million 1,537 deaths 131
Sweden 10.12 million 3,529 deaths 350 deaths per million population
Ohio has 4 times more density of population 109/km2 than Sweden 23/km2 but 1/3rd the deaths.
And that’s even though Sweden de facto implemented a partial lockdown.
Using an arbitrary number of 50 dead in a total population of unknown size on a specific date beyond first infection is a USELESS and essentially valueless datapoint unless you know the universe from which each of those numbers is being compared and is especially meaningless when collected across 50 different political entities making independent lockdown/nolockdown decisions as is the case in the US.
For example, 50 people dead 60 days post first infection is possibly catastrophic in a universe of < 10,000 population, but it is a blip in a universe of a population of > 10,000,000 population, and mere noise in a universe of > 300,000,000 population, yet YOUR cited chart treats ALL of them equally. Had it only plotted the RATE per 100,000 population, THEN it might have some validity. It doesn’t.
You are doing better when you parse it down by comparing political entities of comparable sizes/populations. But even there you fail. Obfuscation by including California for area, but Ohio for population with Sweden fails, because the real variable should be population density per political entity. You’re mixing them. That’s not permissible.
Even that doesn’t work because population density figures for such entities are averaged for the entire state/country and fail to recognize that most Covid deaths occur in areas where the populations are concentrated, rather than averaged evenly across area of the entity. Washington State, for example had more than 80% of its Covid fatalities in a few nursing homes centered around the Seattle area. Most of New York’s very high numbers are in the New York City and its Burroughs. California is six major crowded cities surrounded but a lot of sparsely populated open spaces, with the few deaths it had mostly in those six cities with a few scattered in the boonies. Utah, where I live has had a total of 77 deaths, with the vast majority in Salt Lake City, where the population is clustered. Yet when you look at the population density for Utah, you’ll get a number per square mile that DOES NOT REFLECT the population density of SLC. Same for New York State, or California. Lock down? When and where in California, and how much? Do YOU know? No, you don’t. You assume you do.
You’ve not addressed any of the fatal flaws of those data in the chart I’ve pointed out. Not a single one. You’ve raised smoke screens to legitimize destroying our economy for a disease that is turning out to be about as contagious and as dangerous as a bad seasonal influenza.