[vpaulus]

Do not forget that what Sweden took action was accommodated to the general behaviour of the Swedes. They keep a reasonable distance at all. If any restriction is only a recommendation and not a strict rule, they comply anyway. They generally have better state of health than many - even European - country.

Did Sweden act much better than other countries, and got much better outcome? Yes.

Could the same work in other countries? Most likely not, except other Nordic states.

[mhb]

That's pretty dismissive. The article mainly addresses the premise that Sweden's actions produced a better outcome than other countries including ones which had a predilection for social distancing. This is by no means universally conceded.

It would be nice to think that other countries could learn something after accepting that Sweden actually had a better outcome.

[ghaff]

I'm not sure it's really dismissive. It's more that, even given a lack of strict government policy actions, Sweden ended up having as good or relatively better outcomes than many/most other countries. But I'm not sure be more like Sweden makes a very useful playbook--except insofar as the policy recommendation is to take a few high impact actions (e.g. around nursing homes, almost certainly vaccines, etc.) and otherwise have a fairly light touch.

[lambda_garden]

Indeed. A question we should be asking is what the Swedish government should have done if faced by mass non-compliance

[mhb]

And before we ask that question we should ask how non-compliance is affected by edicts versus presentation of the costs/benefits of actions and the rationale for any suggestions.

[ghaff]

The challenge is that Swedes tend to be relatively healthy, antisocial, and sensible (as suggested by the paper) isn't either very actionable or quantifiable. Though there is an implication (which is a clear agenda in this paper) that explicit government policies didn't make a whole lot of difference in this case.