Sweden will have a lower death rate in 2020 than it had in 2010 (philip.greenspun.com)

That is a thin reed to keep holding on to a losing ideological point.

The hospitals have been overwhelmed at frighteningly regular intervals. Intensive care wards have needed to triage and let people die in corridors. Doctors and nurses have been forced to work overtime and unable to take their normal holidays, not to speak of the trauma of seeing so many people die in desperation.

But someone has found some statistical anomaly that makes it all seem ok.