Limiting it to immediate neighbors leaves you with comparisons which have similar environment, socio-economic status, and culture/lifestyle. When doing statistical analysis you first try to control for as many potential confounding variables as possible. By limiting the comparisons to like vs like on many different variables you end up being able to make stronger claims about the consequences of active choices.

Sweden shares similar socio economic status and culture and lifestyle with other European countries I completely agree.

This analysis doesn't limit it to immediate neighbours. If it was doing that it'd need to include the Baltic states too and when you do that Sweden goes back to being average.

In reality this argument is a form of motivated reasoning. It boils down to, if you ignore all the countries that disprove the hypothesis behind lockdowns and take a tiny number that did better than Sweden, then search backwards for some justification as to why this cherry picking is legitimate, you get a 'neighbours hypothesis' that unfortunately has to ignore some of the neighbours.

It's just rationalizing by people who cannot accept that lockdowns failed, because if they accepted that they'd have to accept that academic expertise in general has failed. And not only failed. Failed in ways that were destructive and damaging.

If you think that Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania share the same socio-economic status, population distribution, and cultural/lifestyle factors as Sweden then I think you are the one who is engaging in motivated reasoning. The reason we keep looking at Sweden and comparing it to its neighbors is that they are a perfect example of the success of lockdowns in preventing high death rates at the start of Covid. Anyone who claims otherwise seems to be either delusional or deceptive.

He's calling out the fact that you compare all countries to each other except in the case of Sweden.

People compare other countries to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore all the time to justify covid lockdowns and restrictions.

But in the case of Sweden a country that outright disproves effectiveness of covid restrictions you require the frame of reference to only be the specific neighboring countries to cherry pick to fit your narrative.

It's either monstrously nightmarishly disingenuous or completely boneheaded and clueless.

They're fine with comparing countries all over the world with each other....

But when it comes to Sweden the one country that disproves their narrative it has to be just a neighboring countries.

It seems so disingenuous to me.