You're the one asserting they're not comparable here, so please trot out some factors where Sweden is measurably different from its neighbors then.

The pandemics is extremely complex. Fatality rates have looked very different in seemingly similar countries, and even within different areas of a single country.

Saying Covid response is the only thing that could possibly explain the observed differences between Sweden and (let say) Norway is simply wrong.

I do suspect Sweden would have had less fatality had they implemented a lockdown. Would it then be comparable to Norway? I wouldn't bet may life on it. France has almost twice as many covid death as Germany even though they implemented a much stricter lockdown.

It seems some people hate Sweden for choosing their way to deal with the pandemics. Could have they done better otherwise? maybe, but overall, no cataclysm happened there, they did ok in terms of fatality compared to rest of Europe, and much better for the other metrics, as stated in the article.

"Lockdown" is also an almost meaningless term. People adjusted behavior almost everywhere--including Sweden. Furthermore, very few places actually implemented a hard lockdown that largely prevented people from leaving their homes. Certainly no where (?) in the US did. Restaurants closed for indoor dining isn't really a lockdown.

It's very hard to correlate policies to outcomes.

> Saying Covid response is the only thing that could possibly explain the observed differences between Sweden and (let say) Norway is simply wrong.

Nobody has claimed that it is, and in fact in this very thread you've seen it correctly noted that Sweden's approach to old age homes was responsible for a significant part of the fatalities -- although here too there's a lot of debate about whether it's the percentage of % in age homes (a bit higher in Sweden), the Swedish tendency to have larger homes, or the Swedish COVID policy decision to treat people at the homes instead of hospitalizing them.

But, again, if you have alternative hypotheses or factors that you think differ greatly between the countries, let's hear them. Because as a native of the region, I'd struggle to find many, at least when it comes to factors a virus would care about (as opposed to, say, preferring sweeter jam with meatballs).

Over the last four years the all cause mortality has been the same for Sweden and Norway [0]. So it would appear more people died in Norway before the pandemic, and more people in Sweden since, equalling out over the last four years.

Maybe this explains the difference during the pandemic - Sweden had more old people.

[0] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201116/Study-compares-de...