But isn't that the point? They accepted more deaths up front, but over the long-run those countries should average out about the same per capita, while Sweden avoided immediate negative social/economic impacts.
I am extremely pessimistic about any country's ability to usefully maintain low infection rates while opening up international travel again. Sweden isn't close to being able to do this in terms of tech infrastructure or cultural mindset.
(That being said, if anyone is going to do it successfully long term, it's going to be south korea)
As the western world could've been, too, but we just... weren't.
But even if its possible to prevent an massive outbreak that doesn't mean its possible to undo a massive outbreak. Korea has prevented large scale community spread by testing and tracing. That has been a successful and preventing an outbreak. But nobody has ever successfully used it to remove a virus from a population after it was already widely in the population.