We should also not forget that the public messaging is important.

"Polls in March and April 2020 showed that more than 70 percent of Swedes trusted the public health agency and in January 2022, 68 percent did."

"By early July 2020, Sweden had not suffered the 82,000 deaths that the models had assumed, but 5,455—less than 7 percent of what was predicted."

On the other hand:

"By July 1, 2020, Sweden had experienced 517 COVID-19 deaths per million people, which was lower than Italy and Spain but as much as 5 to 10 times higher than its geographically and culturally closest neighbors, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. This made Sweden’s approach to COVID-19 look like a fiasco."

However:

"Sweden’s excess death rate during the pandemic was 4.4 percent higher than previously. Compared to the data that other countries report to Eurostat, this is less than half of the average European level of 11.1 percent, and remarkably, it is the lowest excess mortality rate during the pandemic of all European countries, including Norway, Denmark, and Finland."

"After all was said and done, astonishingly, Sweden had one of the lowest excess death rates of all European countries, and less than half that of the United States."

"The world economy was 2.9 percent smaller after 2021 than it would have been according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecast before the pandemic; the Eurozone 2.1 was percent smaller, and the U.S. economy 1.2 percent smaller. The Swedish economy was 0.4 percent bigger. This is even more exceptional since the Swedish government introduced much less fiscal stimulus than most other countries."

More importantly, general vaccine hesitance was averted:

"In 2020 the Swedish childhood vaccination rate was 97.2—up by a tenth of a percentage point from the year before."

"Sweden’s alternative model was to rely more on recommendations, have faith in voluntary adaptations to the pandemic, and try to keep as much of society up and running as possible. Based on what we now know, this laissez faire approach seems to have paid off."

It's an interesting confluence of choices and outcomes to be sure. A few points to add:

- Poverty (economic shrinkage) also causes excess deaths

- Herd immunity for a moderately lethal virus is very much a thing

The issue at the beginning of the pandemic was... nobody knew how lethal COVID-19 was at population scale (or how lethal it might become).

If it was less-lethal and wouldn't become more lethal, the winning move was to minimize restrictions, keep the economy humming, and be okay with many people getting infected quickly.

If it was more-lethal or became more lethal, the above would leave a country fucked, with absolutely no way of reversing course short of a China style "everything stops" lockdown. Which would cause major economic pain and excess mortality as a consequence of that.

So gambling with an entire country's population... which choice do you make? Impossible call to be "right" about.