Why do you compare almost an entire continent to one country ? why not compare Sweden to NYC ?
Sweden is handling it, not great but not terrible and so is the US and many other countries.
On top of that there is a lot that we don't understand, for example why do many Mediterranean countries has low death rate even though the sick count is not low ?
Wisconsin has a large Swedish immigrant population (immigrants 5 generations ago, not first generation), so that rules out genetic factors to a small extent.
If we're talking about efficacy of government lockdown policies, universal healthcare, etc., then we absolutely should compare. And a cursory glance at the data suggests that government lockdown policies have minimal effect on the spread of the virus, there seems to be little to no correlation between severity of lockdown and cases/deaths
That’s a really weird conclusion to draw looking at what’s happened globally and in local pockets. Look at Singapore and South Korea — full lockdown and great control, and then outbreaks in places where the lockdown put people in close quarters (immigrant labor in Singapore) orwhen restrictions were lifted (bars in South Korea). Look at Wuhan itself, where it took time to establish a lockdown and contact tracing, then they got control of the situation and had better outcomes, then a secondary wave once they lifted restrictions. Look at Italy, where the lockdown means Northern Italy has had a very different experience from the rest of the country. Sweden has had a mostly voluntary lockdown and high death rates compared to the rest of Europe and other very similar countries (Norway, Denmark, Finland) have had stricter lockdowns and better numbers.
Also let’s look at the fundamentals. This virus is spread through contact with viral laden particles, either in an aerosol or on a surface. It is obvious that to get the disease you need to come into contact with the virus. Limit contacts and you limit exposure, this is so basic I hesitate to call it science.
You have a tough row to hoe if you’re going to try and prove no correlation between lockdowns and cases.
The data is here [1], that's [2] Europe's correlation between death rate and restriction and that's [3] worldwide (I didn't collect the data nor did the analysis)
Sorry, but there is so much confounding an analysis of this sort that I can take a 30s look at it and blow holes a mile wide through it. For instance, there is no correction in there for density. There is also the fundamental problem of attributing cause and effect -- if the lockdowns reduce transmission, then no correlation in the outcomes could be exactly your goal. Put another way, I'd like NYC to have the same case load per capita as rural Utah. If lockdowns achieve that, you would evidentially tell me that rural Utah, with no lockdown, is the same as NYC and therefore the lockdown was useless. That is not a sound analysis.
The way to do an analysis of this sort is to find very tightly constrained natural experiments. Sweden and Norway (or Sweden and Finland) is an interesting example. Germany and Austria (picking them randomly, I don't know how well-coordinated their lockdown policies are). Or you can pick city twins, like NYC and Mexico City and compare the results each got from their approach.
IOW, in order to say something meaningful about effect of lockdowns, you have to go narrow, not broad.
The cases/deaths per million stats by country (and by state in the US) are everywhere. The US is doing decent compared to most of Western Europe, especially Italy and Spain. Though Germany is doing far better than the US. Sweden isn't taking any significant measures to restrict their populace and while they're doing worse than their neighbors like Norway, they're still better than a lot of Europe.
Sweden is handling it, not great but not terrible and so is the US and many other countries.
On top of that there is a lot that we don't understand, for example why do many Mediterranean countries has low death rate even though the sick count is not low ?