Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland all did considerably better, and have demographics and local conditions that are closer together than comparing Sweden with the rest of Europe. It's a thinly populated Nordic country, so the comparison material should be countries that match those criteria, not the average of the EU, which runs the gamut of high density extremely interconnected countries with major airline hubs all the way to vast emptiness with the occasional city.
In addition to that, it's worth pointing out that even the architect of the Swedish policy defending his strategy acknowledges it would have been dramatically worse if Swedes hadn't mostly worked from home and observed social distancing anyway (i.e. the exact opposite of what most anti-lockdown campaigners want). Also, they imposed strict external travel restrictions to ensure they never imported as many cases as the worse-performing European countries did, and deployed all sorts of restrictions short of lockdosn like banning gatherings of 8 people or more. It's really not the poster child for muh freedom
Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland all did considerably better, and have demographics and local conditions that are closer together than comparing Sweden with the rest of Europe. It's a thinly populated Nordic country, so the comparison material should be countries that match those criteria, not the average of the EU, which runs the gamut of high density extremely interconnected countries with major airline hubs all the way to vast emptiness with the occasional city.
It's an easy mistake to make though.