The previous strategy was to "flatten the curve" and nothing else. There was no vaccine or very effective treatment and this could go on for a very long time. T

The previous strategy was to "flatten the curve" and nothing else. There was no vaccine or very effective treatment and this could go on for a very long time. The previous strategy was optimal for that problem. Now that multiple vaccines are around the corner, minimizing infections can most definitely save lives. Would they have done better if they had been stricter? Yes. But there was no way to know this back then. Imagine that there was no vaccine and the pandemic became an endemic that nobody could escape... and the only viable option was herd immunity. Had that happened, the Swedish strategy would have put them ahead of most. They would have taken a smaller hit to the economy while not losing that many more lives in a given period (do note that, in that case, the period would have been much longer and most of those who died last year had pre-existing conditions and something else would have most likely killed them within the next few years anyway).