Well this is a different topic - the issue I was addressing was the utility of weekly data presented by ciceryadam, which you were questioning.

As to you new point - you are drawing your conclusions from disparate data sources, whilst ignoring confounding factors (as pointed out by ljf). The data on wikipedia give a less dramatic picture, and after adjusting for population things look even less dramatic (10.0 -> 10.8 per 1000 for Slovakia and 9.0 -> 9.5 for Sweden). I don't think you can draw serious conclusions from such limited data.

What else do you know about Sweden that could have skewed their figures? Great healthcare? Strong public support of the measures that were put in place? Trust in govt? Healthy community to start with?

To say that Sweden and Swedes took no steps to protect themselves and their communities is baseless - I assume you do not live there? I have friends in Sweden, and the lives they are living are very very different to the friends in Australia and NZ.

If you check the graph in my first comment, you can see that the 9.4% increase happened onward from week 42, so it was the second wave that hit the country hard. By that time, the country gave up on contact tracing. Plus in the second wave , the lockdown was enforced only for people not tested by mass antigen testing.

You can compare Denmark and Slovakia (similar population size) for 2 different approaches to the 2nd wave, with 2 completely different outcomes. Denmark as a whole has as many people in ICUs as Slovakia has in one hospital.