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According to the article, “the data shows the policies of Finland and Norway have been even less restrictive than Sweden's for most of the pandemic.” Jon Miltimore provide the information that prove that Norway and Finland have less restrictive polices than Sweden's for most of the pandemic. He says: Norway and Finland show that the coronavirus doesn’t care about government policy. Their numbers have remained low with moderately strict lockdowns and with laissez-faire policies.”
"with moderately strict lockdowns and with laissez-faire policies" is a contradiction, in case you didn't notice.
"Lockdowns" were policies where people were discouraged from even leaving their homes. Perhaps you've forgotten. Perhaps you don't give enough credit to the humble dog owners who just wanted to walk their dog, and were harassed for stopping for a chat while doing that, and who called their representative in large numbers. A strict lockdown is stopping citizens on the street and asking their business. A "moderately strict lockdown" is shutting businesses so the employees no longer have that reason to leave their home.
I supported lockdowns and business shuttering at the time. I over-estimated how bad the pandemic could be. I admit I was wrong: deeming some businesses "essential" and others "non-essential" screwed up the world economy. But there was a nub of good sense in it: shuttering only those businesses in which transmission of the virus is unavoidable (like hairdressers), requiring moderate changes of practice in other non-essential businesses, and leaving it to the market to separate safe-practice retailers from unsafe ones, would have achieved as much but with less overall damage. It's easier in retrospect.
I would never say "leave it to the market" entirely, but in the US there simply aren't enough civil servants to control all the businesses in a case-by-case basis. A large part of the private sector needed to be left to its own devices, to attract customers or not based on the measures they voluntarily took to reduce Covid transmission. A few needed to be shuttered entirely. And in between, in the businesses that could continue but with altered practices, there government resources are enough to regulate them.
In the US, it was the primary duty of Federal Government to guide State policy. They went hard one way (for lockdowns) then hard the other way, and succeeded only in a political aim of dividing America (with its open borders between States), State against State. It would be giving Trump too much credit to say he did this on purpose. His intention was never anything more than avoiding responsibility. Trump was, and still is, just a boy walking clumsily in his father's shoes.