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Yep. In order to claim something a failure you need objective criteria to begin with. In terms of Covid those objective criteria never existed and thus the King's claim has as much meaning and weight as mine that Sweden's handling of Covid has been a wild success compared to other countries.

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The links in the comment you quoted were evidence in support of mask mandates.

"while many of the available interventions work, mask mandates stand out for their effectiveness and relative lack of economic tradeoffs. “Mandatory mask policies seem to be as effective as policies that have higher costs,” says Tookes."

The article is saying that mandating masks has a positive impact, but recommending them does nothing.

There are many objective criteria: case rate and death rate are just the most obvious.

Those two criteria make no case for mask mandates nor lockdowns. Also, looking at those to data points alone is a woefully inadquate model for policy decisions.

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