Sweden also has very different demographics than here. Fewer multi-generation households, a lot more one-person households, generally a somewhat uniformly wealth nation where a lot of people were already WFH.
Plus, they have more of a tendency to trust their government than to assume that a mask mandate is part of the Bill Gates Illuminati Bilderberg Koch/Soros master plan to enslave us all before feeding us to the lizard people.
You can look at case numbers, but Sweden is still 6th in Europe in deaths/1M population amongst populous nations (i.e. San Marino and Andorra excluded). Their deaths/1M number has been rising faster than Italy/UK/Spain ahead of them and is growing VERY close to those countries, so they could be 3rd in Europe within another 1-2 months. And that includes Russia in "Europe".
Then there's utee's point. Maybe they're not testing that well. They're roughly 17th in Europe in tests/1M population amongst populous nations. The 5 nations above them in deaths/1M are also above them in tests/1M, so it might not be apples-to-apples.
But even then, with limited testing, Sweden has the 2nd-highest cases/1M rate amongst populous nations in Europe. The only one higher is Spain.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countriesThen you compare them to their "peers" which is the Nordic neighbors of Norway and Finland, which are the closest demographic comparisons to Sweden, and Sweden has 10x the deaths/1M rate as those two countries and >4x cases/1M rate of those two countries. They both have equal or higher tests/1M rate, so it shouldn't be a testing discrepancy.
So I'm not sure we can walk away from this and say Sweden did "well". It's too early to know whether some of those other countries will catch up when you talk about the total "area under the curve", but I think a lot of people talk about how wonderful Sweden is based on raw numbers without accounting for the fact that it's a country of low population so it just doesn't seem as high as other places.
And to bring up the state of GA, as I know you do, Cincy, GA has over twice the tests/1M rate that Sweden has, and has a slightly (~20%) lower deaths/1M rate than Sweden. They do have a significantly higher [3x] cases/1M rate. Not sure how to explain that difference where they have 3x the case rate but a lower death rate... Maybe they're more aggressively testing a younger portion of the population whereas Sweden isnt? I don't know...