I think what some people take from this is the opposite: that Sweden's strategy hasn't been a catastrophe many predicted (aside from poor initial elderly protections).

The opposite of what? I'm not making any claim here. Even in countries like the US, relative deaths from Coronavirus are small in comparison to overall deaths (ex. In US - an extremely hard hit country - between 3/1 and 8/1, 1.34M deaths occurred, only about 150K attributed to covid19).

My point was that one can't draw any CV conclusion from the Sweden death graph in the month of September 2020.

As to the strategy and effectiveness, that is subjective - they had a higher mortality rate than their Nordic neighbors but not a catastrophic level, I guess.

(and aside from any comparisons to its neighboring countries too?)

Yes, it has been a catestrophic fuck-up. As predicted.

Wasn’t the point that when those neighboring countries eventually open up, then the people that would have died will probably still end up dying and the numbers will look the same?

Bold claim Cotton, let's see if it works out... Joking aside, that is based upon the mostly discredited 'herd immunity' theory. It is not the case that someone who is in a vulnerable population is somehow doomed to die from this disease, and there are many different ways to mitigate the problems as countries respond to the ebb and flow of the different Covid waves. When the neighboring countries open up (and several of them have partially opened at times) they have more medical resources available to mitigate the effects and they are more prepared to revert to lockdown if necessary.