I live in the UK. We had politicians who tried to appeal to reason, and they got shouted down in the media. The most popular politicians today are the ones who wanted to lockdown fastest. Everyone in care homes still died. We had to spend hundreds of billions to pay people through lockdown. People have still ended up getting infected. And (most) people are still avoiding out anyway, irregardless of lockdown. It is just chaos.

The politicisation of this issue was totally catastrophic. There was right-wing and left-wing science, no-one could accept that some things are unclear, and anyone who opposed the "correct science" was a conspiracy theorist nutjob.

I am glad that some places took another path though. I thought masks would be effective, where I am you are legally obliged to wear masks inside, and our rate of infection is higher than it was a few months ago...I was wrong. The UK won't learn from this (we would have locked down irregardless, I have had people tell me earnestly that they won't stop socialising, irregardless of other people's health...btw, these are not right-wing/freedom people...this was a lefty software developer who likes going to the pub...as a society, we deserve to suffer), other places hopefully will.

My perception is that it wasn't a gamble for Sweden either, the guy in charge seems to have had experience with infectious diseases at the WTO..tbf, a lot of our people had experience in this area too (and specifically with coronaviruses/influenza)...maybe in terms of public/international opinion but...the UK took that path, it didn't work.