Covid is transmitted by interpersonal contact, and Sweden has a low population density. There is no equivalent of the Boston/NYC/DC megalopolis, Greater Los Angeles, or even the Bay Area in Sweden. Frankly, there isn't an equivalent of most of central Europe. See this map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_b...

So for Sweden to be doing about as well (in deaths per capita) as the rest of Europe is a sign of failure on Sweden's part. To be doing better than the US is no comparison at all.

If you compare it to other Nordic countries (which are more comparable in terms of population density), it's doing much worse: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113834/cumulative-coron...

Anyway, isn't this all my point? Sweden gets an excuse because other countries aren't doing well. Nobody is expecting anyone to do well. Why bother trying to save lives if nobody else is trying either? Why bother trying to do as well as Vietnam (which literally shares a land border with China!) if nobody is going to hold you to that standard?

Totally this - especially when compared to the nearest neighbours - Finland, Norway and Denmark.

Also see https://fee.org/articles/how-finland-and-norway-proved-swede... titled “ How Finland and Norway Proved Sweden’s Approach to COVID-19 Works”, which discusses the benefits of lighter touch policies.

This article says, "Our World in Data shows Sweden’s government response stringency never reached 50, peaking at about 46 from late April to early June." and "Norway’s lockdown stringency has been less than 40 since early June, and fell all the way to 28.7 in September and October. Finland’s lockdown stringency followed a similar pattern, floating around the mid to low 30s for most of the second half of the year, before creeping back up to 41 around Halloween."

But that doesn't seem to match what Our World in Data is actually showing right now: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...

Sweden's stringency peaked around 65 and has never dropped below 55. Since early June, Norway has mostly been above 40.

So I'm curious what happened - did Our World in Data change their methodology? Did they add new data?

They also mention that 1) they are aggregating all policies, so this isn't a measure of "lockdown," 2) they are measuring the stringency of policies, not their effect (e.g., "Hard curfew at 10pm unless you're going to/from work" is pretty stringent, but probably less effective than "No indoor dining"), and 3) that they measure the maximum stringency of any subnational unit. I'd be very curious to see how exactly they compute their numbers. For instance, if there's a weak national policy on things like travel and quarantine that causes municipalities to do whatever smaller things are in their power like restricting visits to nursing homes, does that add up to a "more stringent" response in their measurement?

Or put more simply - apart from numbers on this chart, what is it that backs up the claim that Sweden had a more aggressive response than Norway and Finland did?

(Furthermore, FEE is a hard-capitalist advocacy organization and is interested in pushing a narrative around reduced government policies around everything, so their interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt, which is why I'm trying to find the original data. The conclusion of their article offers no policy position other than admitting we are powerless to control the course of virulent disease, which seems ... rather contradicted by history.)