Take a country with a small population and relatively small footprint, and compare it to a nation with a massively larger population, spread-out over a huge geographic footprint. And then use a dividing factor of "Per Million" instead of Per 100k... to further exaggerate the results. That's the same logic used by VOX to claim that Alabama & Mississippi are nothing but hotbeds of welfare recipients.
As much as I dislike Vox, they're not wrong. Sweden's numbers are worse than neighboring Nordic states. This doesn't mean that their strategy is worse though. It's estimated that 80% of a given country will contract Covid. The 80% of the population is the area under the curve. A herd-immunity approach sees that population infected at a much faster pace than one that implements hard quarantine. The danger is keeping the peak under the line where the hospital system gets swamped, because if that happens then the case fatality rate spikes. If you can successfully keep that spike low enough so that hospitals can cope while undergoing the herd-immunity approach you greatly reduce the overall impact on the economy, because you didn't lock down and the outbreak is over in a much shorter amount of time. This is probably the best course of action, but it also carries the most risk for the fatality rate if isn't managed just right. And it should be said that the only thing that is going to see us through this is immunity through either naturally produced anti-bodies or a vaccine. The question is do you hard quarantine and wait for a vaccine, or take the managed approach of trying to build up the population's immunity?
We'll only know if Sweden's approach worked when this is all said and done. Only then can we really compare the numbers.
May as well quote Sesame Street. 
