Most of the cases in New York are concentrated in and around NYC, which is an international travel hub with 3 very busy international airports in the area. I don't think there are many places in the world which are going to have had the same number of asymptomatic and symptomatic carriers pass through. So on that basis I don't think it's a good benchmark for most other cities or countries to use.

I wonder if it's better to compare Swedens overall per-capita infection rates with other states in the US where there is a lockdown but whose capitals/major cities are more secondary cities from the perspective of international travel. Let's try North Carolina (picked for being closest in population to SE and also being not a top airport hub or travel destination compared to its neighbors) though it does have significant business and educational centers, it's probably a fair comparison to Sweden wrt population density.

NC total population: 10.5 million NC confirmed cases: 7,285

SE total population: 10.2 million SE confirmed cases: 11,445

So anyway, there are other states and countries that are doing better and worse than Sweden, but I don't think that Sweden is in any way demonstrating that it is doing better by trying to ignore the problem and possibly to blame the lack of strict enough sanitation ("lack of supplies and poor routines"), it's just coming later than to higher-volume travel centers like WA, NYC, the UK, France, Italy, etc.

In any case, the idea of doing better or worse will, in the end, be measured in per capita deaths at the end of this disaster, and we haven't gotten there yet. I truly hope that Sweden finds its way through with as few deaths as possible, but I don't think that's what they've done.

You've gotta compare deaths, not confirmed cases, because cases are being so severely under-tested right now (especially in Sweden, which has a nearly 10% case fatality rate, indicating that they're probably only catching 1 case out of every 50, or more). Deaths are the most reliable statistic we have right now because they're the least likely to be under-reported (though they still suffer from that). Once this is all over and we can do population studies based on widespread blood antibody testing then we'll have better stats, but that's years out.

So, comparing the deaths per 10M population, Sweden is currently at 1,014, whereas North Carolina is at 114. So Sweden is suffering roughly one order of magnitude worse from the pandemic than North Carolina is at the moment. And keep in mind that North Carolina went into a shelter in place order over two weeks ago while Sweden hasn't yet, so there's a loooot more pending cases in Sweden's pipeline than NC's.

> Stockholm (the worst hit part of Sweden) has about half the deaths per capita of the state New York (26 deaths per 100k vs 56 deaths per 100k) despite Sweden having laxer restrictions.

So far. It's way too early into this unfolding disaster to be making pronouncements like this while the figures are still increasing exponentially. NYC has had shelter-in-place for several weeks now while Stockholm has not. If you'd done this analysis a week ago, and then two weeks ago, you'd see Stockholm looking progressively better and better in comparison to NYC the more you go back in time. In other words, they're catching up, because here in NY we're sheltering in place and it's working, and in Sweden they aren't (yet) and thus their spread is higher.

> And Stockholm is generally more densely populated.

Not in comparison to NYC it's not, which is the fair comparison for Stockholm because Stockholm is a city whereas all of New York is a much much larger state that amounts to 1/3rd of the land area of the entirety of Sweden. NYC's density is 10,715/km2 vs Stockholm's 4,200/km2.

Is it really the best comparison to use Stockholm vs. New York state instead of Stockholm vs New York city? A city-city comparison seems more logical, no? In the latter comparison, we have NYC 2x as dense as Stockholm with a much larger population.

I don't know the particularities of Sweden, so maybe it makes more sense as you have outlined it. My apologies if that's the case!

Without air traffic and closed borders, a country that's not that affected could get through it with few measures. Not sure if many countries are still at that stage but it's no coincidence that international travel hubs got affected worst.