One thing that’s become clear to me is that looking at any two places at one point in time, comparing that day’s stats, and using that to judge/justify the Covid policies of each on that day, is naive. We may even be in a “Moneyball” situation where we don’t know the most critical stat to measure.
I do think there is, maybe a purposeful almost?, disregard for environmental conditions. The epidemiologist in question, Dr. Tegnell (interesting that the article made a distinct effort not to use any of his credentials or titles), did say that if you try to compare things in context that the results are very inconsistent: "Covid doesn’t care about history or language, it cares about socio-economic status or migrant backgrounds or crowded housing. That’s where Sweden stands out in a Nordic context, but not so much in a EU context,”" Per capita comparisons are almost meaningless as factors such as population density, public transit, climate, socio-economics, and others have significant impact.