NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[DocLee]

Gary, Sweden provides a good pointer of "what if..." as the only European country to have decided against lock-down and relied on its public spirited population to maintain safe "social distancing".

On May 8th (granted a few weeks ago now) the Financial Times reported that the originator of non-intervention in Sweden (Anders Tegnell, an epidemiologist) estimated that by the end of this month 40% of people in Stockholm (roughly 10% of the Swedish population) would be immune to the virus (immunity will be significantly lower in the rural, less-populated areas). He asserted that the advantage of this is that things would not be anyway near as bad in the 2nd wave of the pandemic which is expected in the autumn.

The downside (which he wasn't reported to have mentioned) was that in attaining this level of “herd immunity”, up to May 7th 3,040 of the Swedish population had died of covid infection. To put that in perspective, in the other Nordic countries, (Denmark, Norway and Finland) which have all instigated some form of lock-down control, their combined total of covid-related deaths amounted to fewer than 1,000 (less than a third of Sweden’s death toll), and this with an aggregate population (16.7mill) which is over 60% larger than the Swedish population (10.23mill).

It all comes down to whether the economy is more important than the increased number of deaths of people who have died before their time, especially if some/many deaths could have been avoided.