KB - I reached that conclusion by comparing the excess mortality in Sweden against her Nordic neighbors, Europe, Israel, the US, and South Korea.
Evaluating excess deaths for 2020-2021, Sweden had 4.2% more deaths than usual (using 2016-2019 as baseline), which ranks below all of Europe (range of 8%-20%), South Korea (8.8%), Israel (12%), the United States (21%), slightly below Finland (5.5%) and Denmark (4.9%). Only Norway (2%) had lower excess deaths. [1]
Additionally, when you examine the details of the excess deaths, Sweden had zero excess deaths in the 0-64 age group in 2020 and 2021. [2]
Note that the article you linked was to the preliminary findings of the commission from October. In the final report recently published the tone was softer: "In comparison with the rest of Europe, Sweden has come through the pandemic relatively well and is among the countries with the lowest excess mortality over the period 2020-2021". [3] While I don't put much stock in the report either way - politicians are prone to saying they were right while always leaving window open to "we could have done better" - I suspect the softer tone was due to Denmark exploding in cases in the end of 2021 and early 2022, but just speculating.
And finally, I think there has been a double standard regarding Sweden - critiques always compare them only to their Nordic neighbors, never to Germany, Israel, the UK, etc. Which is strange because we don't hold restrictions of comparison to anyone else. We compare the US to South Korea, Japan, New Zealand all the time, yet Stockholm is the same distance to Berlin as Chicago is to Denver.
Yet the comparisons to Finland, Denmark, and Norway, even we accept them, fail to realize that all of those countries sent their kids back to school in the spring of 2020 without masks anyway, and had the lowest mask adoption rates in the entire world - which makes it odd to cite them as "doing it right" when arguing masks made a measurable difference in the pandemic.
_________
Sources:
I made this graphic a month ago, it compiles the sources below, but is slightly out of date (i.e., Finland since then added another 1,000 deaths to 2021), but it gives good visual of what I am saying if you don't want to bother recreating pivot tables https://imgur.com/a/EpbGWbg
KB - running out of room, if you reply to this maybe go to a parent comment :)
1) To your question "what made you bring up Sweden"... it was you who brought them up when you quoted: "Lars Jonung, PhD, professor emeritus of economics at Lund University in Sweden -- a country that famously opted out of lockdowns and only recommended masks in public". - I was merely pointing out that apparently didn't matter after all.
2) I'm unclear why you are citing papers from August 2021 when we have data current up through mid February 2022. Much has changed since then. In the link you shared it marveled that Denmark only had 334K cases compared to Swedens 1.1 million. Since that article was published Denmark exploded to 2.79 million and Sweden is now at 2.44 million, despite having double the population.
3) The excess mortality - the best measure of response - demonstrates that Sweden had a better outcome than every country except Norway (and even Norway sent kids back to school throughout pandemic without masks, so I'm not sure what point is proved by citing Norway). You can check my math, I gave you the links above. Maybe this changes in the future?
4) The paper you shared from Statista drives home my point earlier - notice how Sweden was only ever compared to places which did better than Sweden (of which there are very few). If we can compare Florida to California, or Vermont to Missouri, we should be able to compare Sweden to Germany, France, or Israel. Of course, now that we have two full years of pandemic data and Sweden has emerged with the 2nd lowest excess death rate in Europe, it really doesn't matter restricting comparisons to her direct neighbors, the data shows the approach didn't incur the cataclysm predicted.
KB - I reached that conclusion by comparing the excess mortality in Sweden against her Nordic neighbors, Europe, Israel, the US, and South Korea.
Evaluating excess deaths for 2020-2021, Sweden had 4.2% more deaths than usual (using 2016-2019 as baseline), which ranks below all of Europe (range of 8%-20%), South Korea (8.8%), Israel (12%), the United States (21%), slightly below Finland (5.5%) and Denmark (4.9%). Only Norway (2%) had lower excess deaths. [1]
Additionally, when you examine the details of the excess deaths, Sweden had zero excess deaths in the 0-64 age group in 2020 and 2021. [2]
Note that the article you linked was to the preliminary findings of the commission from October. In the final report recently published the tone was softer: "In comparison with the rest of Europe, Sweden has come through the pandemic relatively well and is among the countries with the lowest excess mortality over the period 2020-2021". [3] While I don't put much stock in the report either way - politicians are prone to saying they were right while always leaving window open to "we could have done better" - I suspect the softer tone was due to Denmark exploding in cases in the end of 2021 and early 2022, but just speculating.
And finally, I think there has been a double standard regarding Sweden - critiques always compare them only to their Nordic neighbors, never to Germany, Israel, the UK, etc. Which is strange because we don't hold restrictions of comparison to anyone else. We compare the US to South Korea, Japan, New Zealand all the time, yet Stockholm is the same distance to Berlin as Chicago is to Denver.
Yet the comparisons to Finland, Denmark, and Norway, even we accept them, fail to realize that all of those countries sent their kids back to school in the spring of 2020 without masks anyway, and had the lowest mask adoption rates in the entire world - which makes it odd to cite them as "doing it right" when arguing masks made a measurable difference in the pandemic.
_________
Sources:
I made this graphic a month ago, it compiles the sources below, but is slightly out of date (i.e., Finland since then added another 1,000 deaths to 2021), but it gives good visual of what I am saying if you don't want to bother recreating pivot tables https://imgur.com/a/EpbGWbg
[1] https://www.mortality.org/
[2] Note - this is a direct download xls file: https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-composition/population-statistics/pong/tables-and-graphs/preliminary-statistics-on-deaths/
[3] https://www.thelocal.se/20220225/swedens-pandemic-strategy-fundamentally-correct-coronavirus-commission/
KB - running out of room, if you reply to this maybe go to a parent comment :)
1) To your question "what made you bring up Sweden"... it was you who brought them up when you quoted: "Lars Jonung, PhD, professor emeritus of economics at Lund University in Sweden -- a country that famously opted out of lockdowns and only recommended masks in public". - I was merely pointing out that apparently didn't matter after all.
2) I'm unclear why you are citing papers from August 2021 when we have data current up through mid February 2022. Much has changed since then. In the link you shared it marveled that Denmark only had 334K cases compared to Swedens 1.1 million. Since that article was published Denmark exploded to 2.79 million and Sweden is now at 2.44 million, despite having double the population.
3) The excess mortality - the best measure of response - demonstrates that Sweden had a better outcome than every country except Norway (and even Norway sent kids back to school throughout pandemic without masks, so I'm not sure what point is proved by citing Norway). You can check my math, I gave you the links above. Maybe this changes in the future?
4) The paper you shared from Statista drives home my point earlier - notice how Sweden was only ever compared to places which did better than Sweden (of which there are very few). If we can compare Florida to California, or Vermont to Missouri, we should be able to compare Sweden to Germany, France, or Israel. Of course, now that we have two full years of pandemic data and Sweden has emerged with the 2nd lowest excess death rate in Europe, it really doesn't matter restricting comparisons to her direct neighbors, the data shows the approach didn't incur the cataclysm predicted.