The UK is a bad example, cause they have been doing worse than Sweden in every regard. There are plenty of countries in Europe which have much more relaxed limits now, for example Germany, Switzerland or the Czech Republic. Probably the other Nordic countries too (I'm not entirely sure about the latest there though).
Germany is currently socially distancing at a similar rate as Sweden.
They previously had stricter social distancing and have far fewer per-capita infections and deaths, but the model says they’ll hit a nasty second wave in mid October.
Time will tell whether Sweden’s bet pays off in the long term.
Sweden has a worse death rate than its comparable neighbors, it’s economy has been hit as much if not more, and it has no greater “herd immunity” than the rest.
And the neighbors are opening up in a way Sweden cannot.
Essentially, Sweden did go into lockdown, and the difference from its neighbors were at the very margins. The economy was affected linearly by the additional activity at the margin, in other words, not by much, but on the other hand the virus growth was impacted exponentially, causing a significantly higher infection and death rate.
And this is Sweden, a country with a highly educated population, extremely good social and health systems, that was far better equipped to implement voluntary measures than the vast majority of the world.
Our (Germany) rates are actually somewhat surprising to me. We seem to generally have done very well when compared to other (European) countries of similar density.
> but the model says they’ll hit a nasty second wave in mid October.
I am wary of modeling "that far" in time, because while vaccines may take a little more to get ready, there are plenty of trials starting or going on for pharmacological treatments, which may give readouts as early as September.
While perhaps they won't be able to avoid infections, they might change clinical management significantly, in particular monoclonal antibodies.
