I also don't understand when he says there is/was no social distancing. That is totally not my experience here, a lot of people were working from home and commuter trains were quite empty.
The main problem was that the authority leaders don't believe in wide testing, PPE for nursing home workers or asymptomatic transmission, I guess.
A lot of people also bring their own beliefs about what is appropriate to the interpretation and discussion.
they obviously don't distance (by definition), but economic indicators suggest that Swede's do behave similar to countries that went into formal lockdowns. GDP in the second quarter was down 8.5%, which is not far off from the 10% in Germany or the US.
Indeed; both Sweden (https://ycharts.com/indicators/sweden_unemployment_rate) and Norway (https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_unemployment_rate) have experienced anomalous increases in their unemployment rates that seem clearly linked to the pandemic.
If the article's thesis is correct that Sweden minimally-disrupted the status quo, then we would have expected to see little employment response.
assume there won't be any effect does not make sense in interconnected EU economies
I think the big differentiator is that for California at least, people have been staying at home since late March, with the exception of essential workers (~20%?). Many are working from home, but many are unemployed too.
So while Sweden still did a lot, the distinction is pretty large with regards to disruption to "normal" life. A year or so when we look back, it will be interesting to see how big of an impact that decision had!
I wish we had the technology to broadcast images from far away lands. Alas ..
So numbers going down and death rate staying low should be partly connected to this. Also, Sweden is quite a different country to begin with. Sparsely populated and half of all households are single person. So this ‘doctor’ is a bit careless while he tells the world to do like Sweden. It might end up much worse.