In general, scandanivian countries should be much better protected against the virus, all other things being equal. Scandinavian countries tend to have much lower population density, they culturally require more personal space, they have much lower average dwelling occupancy, in fact they have a lot of people living alone in their apartments etc.
If you compare Sweden with their Scandinavian neighbors you can see how their coronavirus policies failed. If you compare England with their European neighbors and peers (e.g., France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium), you can see how their policies failed.
Comparing Sweden and England is not as instructive. These are two countries that both had failing policies but Sweden did much better because it was better demographically and culturally set up for a pandemic.
One thing I’ve personally found interesting in the US is that nobody talks about the general poor health of a plurality of Americans. We lead the way in obesity and related diseases. Surely that is a factor in covid deaths but I haven’t seen anyone say it aloud.
My opinion is that, along with population density, is the only significant factor.
The reason it's not discussed much is that society as a whole is still under the pharma paradigm, where individual agency on health is all but negated, and "health", is mostly dispensed by a doctor prescribing medicine. Hence the focus on things like masks and expensive drugs like Remdesivir (which is useless) VS getting proper vitamin D status, for example (which is crucial for immune system function and has been shown to be a major factor in COVID).
The each step in the shift from subsistence agriculture => industrial labor => sedentary lifestyles are characterized by their own maladies. It starts with chronic malnutrition, then moves to chronic diseases cause by pollution, then to chronic obesity and heart disease and is compounded by climate. Each country has its own unique mix of the four but the overall rates don't change much.
I don't agree that America doesn't have the highest rate of lifestyle-induced disease, of that's what you were implying.
It's not even particularly right anyway. Most of the western world is a few years or a few decades behind the United States in obesity rates and not far behind at all on heart disease.
I suppose it's not strictly "useless" as it apparently can reduce time spent in ICU in patients who would get better anyway, but in my view to call it useful it should affect outcomes.
I'm also betraying my frustration with pharma's hold on the medical system and minds, where common sense interventions like correcting deficiencies in vitamin D, zinc etc. are seemingly ignored. Even the media is in on it. It's really an awful situation.
it's the same as with the performative aspects of masks: worn in public to feel affirmed for positive action but having no meaningful impact, while doing nothing in private (due to psychosocial awkwardness and its negativity), where some distance can meaninfully reduce transmission rates but provides no positivity (esteem).
In that context Sweden’s strategy is actually reasonable for such a low population country to attempt.
A more general measure is urbanization, and by that measure Sweden is more urbanized at 88% than both Germany at 77.5% and United Kingdom at 84%.
As such nationwide population density isn’t that important, but local population density can be a very useful metric. Norway has 5,432,580 people and Óslo Norway is by far the the most populous city has 952,000 people or 17.5% of the population in the urban area at 8,500/square mile.
London has 8,961,989 people out of 63,182,000 (14.2%) in the Uk at 14,670/sq mile. And Birmingham at 1,141,816 people at 11,040/sq mi and you see the UK might have similar rates of urbanization, but it’s significantly more densely packed.
As to Stockholm Sweden, again the largest city out of 10,367,232 people in Sweden 1,605,030 million (15.5%), are living at 11,000/sq mi.
Of course this is still just an approximation. 1,000 people in a single apartment building sharing elevators adds a risk of transmission those same people living in duplex housing doesn’t.