They had a ton of COVID cases (1M, in a population of 10M!) and have vaccinated heavily. They're also doing a lot of the social distancing things that they initially avoided.
Vaccination does reduce the chance of spreading the virus. Having 10% of the country get the natural variant and 45% fully immune, plus still doing the social distancing stuff, and requiring negative COVID tests for those entering the country, seems like a pretty good way of keeping delta under control.
As in every other country the case count is way lower than the actual number of infections. Most infected people never get tested or officially counted. They estimate that about 33% of Swedes had been infected by May 2021 and presumably the number is higher now.
Yeah, that would be even more consistent with the idea that there's a combination of natural resistance (if not immunity) from the first form of the virus (I think you can get again) as well as resistance for vaccination. It's not going to be 33% + 45% because there'd be overlap in the categories, but that's probably a pretty high rate of resistance.
Couple that with the fact that the Swedes aren't acting completely stupid and are doing a pretty good job of voluntary distancing (not to mention border control) and it seems like the numbers are pretty easily explained. Quite the cost to get there...
Son of a gun, Finland and Norway are not enjoying any of that advantage that Sweden is enjoying. They show rather dramatic delta-bumps. How enlightened of only Sweden.
So, all you have to do is experience a 15x worse outcome in terms of deaths and illness early, in order to have a delta-bump that's half the size (per capita) now. I guess that passes for "enlightenment", at least among the people who are disposed to find that anything Sweden has done is wonderful.
Vaccination does reduce the chance of spreading the virus. Having 10% of the country get the natural variant and 45% fully immune, plus still doing the social distancing stuff, and requiring negative COVID tests for those entering the country, seems like a pretty good way of keeping delta under control.