And all it took was a few thousand unnecessary deaths. Vietnam and Taiwan temporarily shutdown, and the former had 0 deaths while the latter has had less than 10.
OP's and/or TFA's point, as well as many people's who talk about this, seems to be that Sweden is faring as well as its neighbors that did shutdown. That's a big deal.
And did Taiwan shutdown? IIRC they did not. They were able to get way ahead of everyone and stop the spread of covid-19. Since most other countries did not, it's not fair to compare Sweden to Taiwan.
Some people are bent on there being shutdowns no matter the cost, no matter the cost-benefit analysis, no matter if there is no real benefit.
It isn't though. Look at the number of deaths in Norway and Finland, and adjust based on population. Sweden is not doing very well. Perhaps, long term, the other countries catch up if they go through a cycle of opening up some and shutting down, but we don't know that now.
The US has a population 328 million, or roughly 33 times higher. On the face of it with rough calculations their per capita death rate if it was the Us would be around 70k deaths vs the 40k deaths we have so far.
So I think it’s a good point you bring up.
You're off by at least 10,000.