Letter to the editor: Our health care system and covid-19

A front-page story in the Sept. 21 Tribune-Review with the headline “Sweden spared virus surge, but many questions remain” caught my interest. It seems Sweden has not shut down schools, bars, restaurants, hair salons, gyms and other businesses, yet its average covid-19 death rate per capita is about the same as that for the U.S., about 0.06%.

Does this mean that had the U.S. not shut down everything, put millions of people out of work, caused thousands of small businesses to fail, added trillions of dollars to our federal debt and trashed our economy, our per capita covid-19 death rate would be no worse? Now that’s a disturbing thought.

Perhaps a more revealing statistic is the death rate per covid-19 case, i.e. of those persons infected, how many die. According to Johns Hopkins University, as of Aug. 9, Sweden’s case fatality rate is 7.1%, over twice that of the U.S. at 3.3%. In other words, if you get the virus in Sweden, you’re more than twice as likely to die than if you were in the U.S. Your odds of surviving are even worse if you live in Canada, Spain, Italy or the U.K.

I think this says that the U.S., in comparison, has the better health care system. Sweden, Canada, Spain, Italy and the U.K. all have single-payer socialized medicine. It is sad that our covid-19 death toll has surpassed 200,000, but had our health care system worked as well as that of the U.K., our tally would now be over 900,000.

Keep this in mind as politicians howl that we were not prepared and promise to “fix” our health care system.

Robert Horger

Penn Township, Westmoreland County