I very much understand that Sweden could have done better in response to the pandemic, but I feel that there are a lot of points where the paper is disingenuous.

> During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway.

As I understand it, the public health ministry avoided lockdowns partly because it argued it is a short-term strategy and partly because they did not find that it was lawful. To me, it does not seem fair to compare a strategy where one aims to reach goals in the long run, to a strategy that focuses on the short-term (and is deemed unlawful). Especially not since the paper only focuses on 2020. Good on Norway for having a strategy that worked well for them.

> In 2014, the Public Health Agency merged with the Institute for Infectious Disease Control; the first decision by its new head (Johan Carlson) was to dismiss and move the authority’s six professors to Karolinska Institute. With this setup, the authority lacked expertise and could disregard scientific facts.

I don't understand why the paper says "lacked expertise and could disregard scientific facts". That it fired six professors and therefore "could disregard scientific facts" does not seem to rhyme with that they have laboratories specifically for analyzing infectious disease? (Source, could only find Swedish version, sorry: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/om-folkhalsomyndigheten/...). During the pandemic they hired experts as consultants, as I understand it. So were those six professors paramount to the agency having scientific expertise?

> The Swedish pandemic strategy seemed targeted towards “natural” herd-immunity and avoiding a societal shutdown.

This claim seems hotly debated. I tried following the sources in the paper for this but only found paywalls or papers that only talked about herd immunity in general terms. Lucky for me, one of the better Swedish journalists, Emmanuel Karlsten, wrote a long post about it (Source, Swedish: https://emanuelkarlsten.se/tegnell-mejlen-sa-fick-flockimmun...). I read it as that the agency definitely had herd immunity under discussion but it is unclear how much they based their strategy on it. Openly they repeatedly mentioned that they were trying to save as many lives as possible, not (necessarily) achieve herd immunity.

Some of the more radical claims in the paper seem to come from Sörensen (who is also a co-author of the paper).

> Both the Prime Minister and Minister of Health and Social Affairs publicly declared they had no competence considering pandemics or medical issues. In effect the democratic institutions ceased to function (Sörensen 2020)

Mainly from: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Terror-in-utopia%3A-Cr... (finally a source in English!)

It's certainly ...interesting... to read. It's published in a Russian journal of social sciences (https://scindeks.ceon.rs/JournalDetails.aspx?issn=0085-6320) which I can't find that much information on since I don't speak Russian. Interesting headlines in the paper include "The Sovietization of the Swedish state" and "Totalitarian Democracy". Reading it I don't really feel like including a source like that helps the credibility of the paper published in nature.

From the closing parts of the abstract

> If Sweden wants to do better in future pandemics, the scientific method must be re-established, not least within the Public Health Agency.

I don't feel convinced by the paper that such a conclusion can be reached.