Based on mainstream media report, you get the impression that there must be an incredible spike in deaths this year because of the Coronavirus. Well, an interesting chart out of Sweden reveals some staggering information about COVID’s impact in that country.

The chart, below, provides a breakdown of the number of deaths per one hundred thousand in Sweden by year since 2015, and it includes COVID related deaths. For the sake of comparison, the chart only covers the first 33 weeks of each year, but includes when COVID was at its peak in Sweden this year.

Though the number of deaths per 100,000 in 2020 is slightly higher than most other years, at 588 deaths per 100K, 2020 is actually lower than 2015’s death count of 593 per 100K.

So why was there a spike of deaths in 2015? This headline may provide at least part of the answer. READ: Fauci: 2015 Will be ‘Bad Year’ for the Flu

Of course, Sweden did not impose a lock down and experienced a spike in cases because of that decision. But the virus has run its course and the number of COVID-related deaths has plummeted as the country gained what is referred to as herd immunity.

The Blaze notes:

While Sweden always had a better result than Europe’s larger countries, such as England, France, Spain, and Italy, the Swedes took heat for having a higher death rate earlier on than other Nordic countries. But Sweden’s death rate is now under that of the U.S., and cases are increasing in other Nordic countries while Sweden’s are flatlining. Norway is also seeing an increase in cases. Denmark, which was one of the earliest countries to close down, now has the most cases since April, rendering its “prudent” early lockdown meaningless. Clearly, there is no right way to do a lockdown, because human intervention like this can only harm but will never improve the net result.

While everyone focuses on the early death rate in Sweden, the point that is missed is that Sweden avoided all the lockdown deaths, economic destruction, and mental health crisis that are incalculable in other countries. We have some states where clinical depression has reached nearly half the population and where suicides and drug overdoses are skyrocketing. According to one study published in JAMA Network, just as of mid-April, just one month into the national panic, “prevalence of depression symptoms was more than 3-fold higher during COVID-19 compared with the most recent population-based estimates of mental health in the US.” That is a crushing cost to a society that will reverberate here and in similar countries for years to come, but not in Sweden.

And while other countries brace for the second wave of COVID this fall, it seems enough people have caught the virus in Sweden and gained immunity, to essentially stop its spread.

For more information on Sweden’s battle with COVID, READ: Horowitz: While Fauci tells US to ‘hunker down,’ Sweden’s no-lockdown coronavirus results speak for themselves