For example, lack of gloves etc led to spread of covid in elderly care homes. That happened because countries like Germany stopped export of gloves and mask from their factories (and hijacked some shipments passing their borders).
The messaging from the authorities was clear: don't do that. Protect the elderly. The mistake was believing that saying it would magically make it happen, when there is no money, no training, no equipment.
That doesn't make sense. Social distancing (which includes lockdowns) is a mitigation for the lack of other means of infection control (like PPE and treatments). If you don't have PPE, then you have to social distance more strictly to reduce transmission.
They could have imposed much stricter measures to limit public gatherings and do it faster, even more public messaging, clearer guidelines, working to make sure that everyone was inline with the guidelines.
Yes it would have helped with massive amount of testing, which they said wasn't possible, and tracing and more effective quarantine.
Norway: 237 deaths
Sweden: 4468 deaths
(Yes there are more people in Sweden than Norway, but not that much more).
My (personal, subjective, I'm not a doctor, etc…) impression is that Sweden authorities where afraid of overreacting and the economic fallout of that. The Norwegian government (despite currently being right-wing) still decided to be careful and eat the economic cost.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden
1. A main aspect of the response, i.e., the issuing of "recommendations" instead the implementation of outright restrictions seem to have been caused by legal concerns, which means this is probably not something that Tegnell and his team decided.
2. Norway can rely on its natural resources and on the resulting "oil fund" to mitigate an economic crisis, Sweden lacks such resources, at least to the Norwegian extent.
3. The Norwegian government is "right-wing" from a Scandinavian perspective. Many of its policies would be considered socialist in the US.
4. Most deaths in Sweden are related to elderly care and the lack of preemptive efforts to prevent covid-19 spread in elderly care homes, which was certainly a big mistake, but somewhat unrelated to many of the measures that Sweden is scrutinized for.
Nr. 4 is spot on, though.