When the virus is either under control or has become a normal part of the disease cycle like the flu. Right now all stats are incomplete and no one knows how the situation will develop based on the strategies.

> It's like saying let's wait for the company's bankruptcy before we judge the CEOs performance.

Yes, it's like that if it was in the middle of a worldwide recession with incomplete numbers and all companies were dealing with similar issues. Sweden has done some things differently, and it will be interesting to see how that stacks up when we eventually know enough to judge it.

> We have enough data at this point to see what works and what doesn't

Do we? To me it seems like we have both successful and non-successful countries taking wildly different strategies and the long term effects on society are not known. Either you know something the rest of us don't or you're wrong.

Precisely, it’s pretty easy to tell from the Covid-19 death rate in Sweden that’s its reached a saturation point. The last few weeks have had < ~5 COVID-19 related deaths per day. It’s flat-lined, while many countries will continue likely having second, third, or even fourth waves. If a vaccine is developed and widely distributed, then that’d be a good stopping condition as well.

The health institute in Sweden isn’t by running an experiment anymore than the "experiments" running in say NY & CA. Every thing I’ve read indicates broad national Swedish support, of course there’s dissenters but news sources would indicate they’re in the minority. Compare that to the contention in say CA, or Germany over the lockdown/shutdowns of normal life.

In the grand scheme I believe most people will realize a total of 5,000 deaths in a country that normally has a couple hundred thousand die every year isn’t extreme. Unfortunate, but not much different from most years (it’s possible Sweden will overall lose less people than the average on previous years). Just this cause has a lot of scary news behind it.

> Precisely, it’s pretty easy to tell from the Covid-19 death rate in Sweden that’s its reached a saturation point.

To be clear: I said no such thing. I think it's far to early to evaluate that. Currently things in sweden look pretty good IMO, but "currently" and "pretty good" can shift radically and fast.

> that normally has a couple hundred thousand die every year

Seems like the normal deaths per year are around 95000.

My point is mostly that I think it will take at least a year for us to get stats that are comparable between countries since different countries track it differently and have different efficiency/centralization of tracking. What will be even harder will be to track secondary and societal effects of both the virus itself and the measures taken to prevent spread, which will probably have a ongoing effect for many years.

Oops, my bad, I misread your comment. I still agree with your point that it’s too early to draw complete cross comparisons. While also that it appears that Sweden has hit a saturation point. Other countries in Europe will take a while before things stabilize. Even then, there could be more outbreaks in either Sweden or other Western European countries so it’ll be a while yet before it’s really time to draw final conclusions. It’ll be years before we get truly thorough conclusions.

Also good to know the average numbers. I think even at about a hundred thousand yearly my point holds. It’s high enough that many wouldn’t agree too.

> Is treating you country like a guinea pig really a good leadership idea?

How is indefinite house detention, destroying small business and lower levels of the economy, and ripping asunder the fabric of normal society any less "treating your country like a guinea pig"?

> It's like saying let's wait for the company's bankruptcy before we judge the CEO's performance.

Ok let me try doing you: "I'm going to hold you hostage indefinitely...it's for your own safety!"

Anders Tegnell (current state epidemiologist of Sweden) said that the success of strategy can bee seen after a year or so. Tegnell's opinion is that Sweden failed to safeguard the elderly, and that's the cause of the high death rate at the beginning (this seems to be true).

The end is when COVID is either endemic in your country, or is no longer able to spread exponentially even without any non-permanent large-scale interventions.

Sweden can't "throw in the towel" and go back to before 2020 -- the people who have died have already died (and notably, more than half of the COVID-19 deaths so far in Sweden happened before May 1, and about 90% before mid June). Implementing lockdown measures now won't bring those people back to life, and since the number of cases is low and continuing to decrease now, also would have very little benefit otherwise.

Unless you're referring to stopping lockdown measures as "throwing in the towel and admitting you fucked up", in which case the answer is "definitely not before there's some plausible story you can tell about why it's fine to do that now but wasn't before". And any country that hasn't had widespread community spread like Sweden is likely to see the same sort of spread Sweden saw early on if they implement the same measures Sweden did.

You’re assuming the trajectories will remain static . Refrain judgement until the pandemic subsides. The rankings will change