I am sorry I have to disagree.
I have followed several European countries policies and (real) results.
Globally, except Denmark who had both strict confinement at Spring and few deaths, countries which confined most had more deaths than others, so there, Sweden and other countries who didn't confine were right.
The number of deaths can be roughly deduced from official weekly death numbers, when compared with expected deaths for the same week, as here :
euromomo.eu
The official CoViD deaths numbers, or number of infections, cannot be compared between countries because counting methods are not the same. Sweden look more heavily affected comparatively, because they have been more exhaustive than other, more affected countries.
From surveys showing which policies are effective or not, what Sweden "ought to have done" at the beginning is closing borders, testing more (but I don't know if they had enough means; I just know for my country, France, that the government refused cheap testing means until the end of the Spring epidemic and then only started to test before even entering a sort of craze in the Summer. Also, Sweden was not very swift at catching the way of getting masks in a sudden bubble market, I would say that's not their culture. And also, they were part of the global Western failure of confinement of the residents in care home bedrooms. Germany at least took the means of trying all they could to atone this scare, and they managed to avoid the associated deaths. I suppose Sweden didn't?
I rather rely on Swedish health authorities to assure safe Worlds, both for skaters and for Sweden itself, but I feel scared by those petitions, based on panic rather than on any scientific grounds, in case they could impel Sweden into unsafe "safety measures". And in safety, there's the CoViD question, but not only : there's the risk of injury, there's the risk associated to not following one's own right diet, etc.
As to vaccines, while "normal strains" seem to be waning and probably-vaccine-triggered "new strains" on the rise, I hope nobody feel safe and entitled to imprudence because they got their jabs, as they don't protect against new strains.
Oh yes, I saw the report and I was just waiting for someone to bring this into discussion.
First of all, just because other countries are worse, it doesn´t mean that someone who have done it better, isn´t bad.
That countries like France and Spain had worse numbers with lockdown, doesn´t mean they would have been better if they didn´t have lockdown, it would probably be a lot worse.
The high numbers can be explained by other factors, such as general health, use of antibiotics (in Nordic countries it´s very restrictive use), health care system, population density and culture difference. For instance, people in the Nordic countries aren´t as social and it´s more natural for us to do social distancing. We don´t kiss on the check and we rather have a seat for urself at public transportation.
You only mentioned Denmark, but Sweden had the most bad outcome from the Nordic countries, no doubt, countries who are similar to each other and doesn´t have the difference as mentioned above.
So just because France and Spain is ranked as nr. 23 and nr 15. doesn´t mean that Sweden did an excellent job in their Covid response.
Sweden death roll is 13 000, total cases per 1M pop. is 1,282, ranked as nr. 24 in the world.
Denmark death roll is 2377, total cases per 1M pop. is 405, ranked as nr. 71 in the world.
Finland death roll is 767, total cases per 1M pop. is 138, ranked as nr. 109 in the world.
Norway death roll is 632, total cases per 1M pop is 114, ranked as nr. 116 in the world.
Iceland death roll is 29, total cases per 1M pop is 85, ranked as nr. 126 in the world..
Sorry to say this, but different ways to count deaths can´t explain this huge difference. Except for Iceland who has a clear advantage of not having borders, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway are quite similar countries and there is no doubt Sweden could have same outcome if they would have more strict measures from the beginning.
They are well aware that the huge difference from their neighbors countries, but they (Anders Tegnell) strongly believed that herd immunity was possible and that was the goal in the beginning. They strongly believed they would only have this first big wave, they would reach heard immunity by the summer and the rest of the world would struggle with second and third wave, and so eventually the rest would catch up and even have worse numbers then Sweden.
It was a big gamble, because they didn´t know if immunity would last.
Instead they put a enorm and unnecessary press on the health care system and they have exposed a lot of people for long covid and had high death numbers.
Also I don´t why you mention Sweden not using mask with supply issues. That was months ago. So the same in Norway, we did have problems with the mask supply one year ago. Now there is no problem. You can even buy them cheap at the grocieries store out in the country. Since August people in Norway started using mask in the big cities and once it was mandatory, people had no problem using and frankly it´s just a habit, face mask have never been in our culture before, so the culture argument is just a lame excuse.
The Swedes have slowly started using face mask after the authorities have finally admitted it could prevent the spread. But it´s not mandatory so still quite few are using it. For months the authorities there have systematically claimed that face mask does not help and it that it even could cause more cases. So why on earth would Swedes start using face mask now when they have been told for months they should not bother? If the authorities wants Swedes to start using mask, they have to make it mandatory.
