https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden...
What happened in 1993?
A Flu Pandemic...
That no one has ever heard about, that seemed to have no lasting impact, and occurred when the population was younger and 25% smaller (thus having a proportionally much greater impact).
Without the media panic, COVID-19 would have come and gone as a unusually deadly flu wave, nothing more.
Second, there was also a massive (and local) financial crisis in Sweden during 1992 and 1993, resulting in mass unemployment. The federal interest rate peaked at ~500% in 1992. While influenza deaths are always tragic, the financial crisis is what most people will remember from those years.
Also, the population was roughly 15% smaller in 1993 compared to 2019, not 25%. No matter how you measure it, COVID-19 has proven to be far deadlier over the span of a few months.
Given the explosive dynamics of COVID-19 that soon converges to R<1 going for herd immunity was most likely a bad choice.
For Germany cutting the flu in half worked - while the bad math of the epidemiologists-community seems to last forever...
I think this has been repeated a lot. No one is "going for herd immunity". Every country including sweden has two goals: having as few as possible infected and preventing healthcare from being overwhelmed. If partial or full immunity makes the virus go away that's a fortunate side effect of slow burn, not the "goal".