[UrsaMedius]

This is an oversimplification. What specifics do you claim puts Sweden closer to the other Nordics than other European contries?

For example, Sweden had school breaks around the time of the large outbreaks in northern Italy and Austria, leading to many ski vacations to those areas. Did the other Nordics?

To be clear, I don't proclaim this little example to be an explanation for why Sweden had more cases, only to shine some light on how complicated things can be. It is not clear that Sweden's response "failed" and it certainly isn't "pretty obvious".

[jsnell]

> For example, Sweden had school breaks around the time of the large outbreaks in northern Italy and Austria, leading to many ski vacations to those areas. Did the other Nordics?

Yes, Norway and Denmark had ski vacations at the same time with a lot of travel to the Alps. All three countries had very similar initial conditions and trajectories for the epidemic until early April. The differences in outcomes were clearly related to policy decisions made in March and April.