how is sweden doing?

well, you could be naive and just divide the number of deaths by the number of cases. but, we know that's a horribly retarded analysis, at this point. rather, as deaths are a direct metric and official government case counts are basically worthless information, what you need to do is try to calculate an accurate number of cases via the number of deaths, and an estimate of the mortality rate.

a good estimate of the mortality rate right now is between 0.1-0.5%. this is somewhere between the seasonal flu and the spanish flu, but much closer to the spanish flu.

so, an off the cuff calculation would suggest they have between 500,000-2,500,000 cases.

"but, that means they're failing. look at all of the cases."

again - that's based on the idea that you can burn the virus out, which we know is a horribly retarded opinion. as the population of sweden is around 10.25 million, that would suggest that between 5%-25% of the population is now immune to the virus, at least until it mutates.

at 66% for protective immunity, i would suggest a lower bound for the death toll would be about 6800 in the end.

now, is it fair to compare sweden to new york city? well, sweden is a country, and new york city is a city. that means that sweden has varying population densities, and new york city doesn't. the north of sweden is even basically a different country. the answer is "no, not really".

what kind of numbers do you get by doing the same analysis on data from the united states? the answer is that there are probably between 12 million and 62 million cases in the united states, indicating there's between 4%-19% immunity.

"so, if america has lower immunity, then it's winning. the lockdowns are working! hooray!"

well, they don't say americans are stupid without evidence, right?

these are marginal differences, in truth. but, i'd rather get to immunity faster, meaning i'd argue that sweden is winning.

what about canada?

calculating case counts from the death toll and a reasonable mortality rate, you're looking at between 600,000 and 3,000,000 actual cases - most in the detroit-quebec city corridor. that's 2%-8% immunity. so, unfortunately, canada would be rather far behind on building immunity, right now - but immunity is probably much higher in the more populated regions, even if it lags behind in the rural areas.

note: these calculations are extremely haphazard, in that you probably shouldn't compare the entirety of sweden to the entirety of the united states or the entirety of canada, even if it's better than comparing the entirety of sweden to the city of new york.