Looking at Swedish corona stats, not quarantining people using force and closing everything down but instead asking us plebs to act responsibly on our own accord seems to work just as well as the more authoritarian methods.
Not to rain on your parade, but in reality sweden probably just tests not nearly enough and the big wave is coming. The CFR is at 3,6% which at this time points to a big dark number. The swedish death rate per capita is currently on par with the UK and twice as high as the US. Norway for example has about as many infections as sweden but less than a third of deaths...
I'm not suggesting we are doing better, just not worse. If the more draconian measures don't yield better results than a mere suggestion from the PM to act responsibly, there is literally no reason to implement them.
It's too premature to say Sweden's approach is yielding better or equal results. It may still, for particular reasons or a better general approach. I'd say it's riskier, but maybe your government will be vindicated.
I think they still have quarantine as an option for Stockholm, but wont do it unless they really really need to. And also that our experts thinks it's dangerous to implement it too early, since people will start to violate quarantine just as they are needed indoors the most.
I personally approve of how they've been running it, and it seems like most people agree.
It also has the added benefit of making people focus more on their own actions and less on everyone else.
I guess it's true you could shutdown "too early" (though from a contagion standpoint it cannot hurt, at worst you're setting the clock to almost 0 if there's really few cases) but half the world is there already and the economy has already gone into sleep mode, so I think countries shutting "too late" may run the risk of having to shut anyway when most of the major economic players are going to restart the engine, suffering longer closure and travel restrictions. It's probably a bigger question mark for the US than you, but still.
Also, it's probably an unprovable assertion but maybe the Swedish approach could be facilitated because all neighbouring countries / places that are interconnected with Sweden are taking the hit now, reducing the amount of people that could carry the infection in.
It's true, however, that shutdowns may have a big toll on general mental health, small businesses and poor workers.
fifstar pointed that Sweden was maybe not testing enough, if so the policy is more of a gamble than a rational approach.
But who knows ? I sure wish I could see friends and enjoy the sun right now. We'll probably need to wait late April-May to really have a better understanding of how far the virus penetrated, how effective were the shutdowns and where we'll be going from there.