It’s been useless because it doesn’t have governance over pandemic response. It’s up to the member states. Member states have been mostly useless, yes.
Yes, Sweden - which remained basically open for business, with only some closures to senior schools, no masks, no hospital overloading, and no lockdowns.
Sweden has a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than Czechia, Belgium, Slovenia, UK, Hungary, Bosnia, Italy, Bulgaria, Moldova, Macedonia, Slovakia, USA, Portgual, Spain, Croatia, France, Poland.
Its 2020 deaths were only 5.75% higher than its 2018 deaths:
And even then can mainly be explained by a weak 2019 flu season (with deaths in 2019 3.6% below 2018) and potentially lower deaths in 2021 due to mortality displacement.
By contrast, Germany, with extensive and rolling lockdowns, had deaths 3.2% higher than 2018:
So a superficial analysis would suggest that society-wide lockdowns could have saved a country like Sweden 2.55% of deaths, or 2,486 people. So you would be locking down 4,115 people in order to save one of them from dying of COVID, beyond what could be achieved from softer or voluntary measures.
Sounds a lot like the snafu the U.S. had around testing, precautions, etc: everything was left up to the member states. I'm not sure why the vaccine rollout has been different; maybe because the purchasing and at least part of the distribution was centralized?
Because the US doesn’t actually operate like that; it was just Trump being stupid and evil. Now that we have a president who’s not a vindictive moron, we’re functioning properly.
