The fact that Austria has now overtaken Sweden in terms of total covid mortality really means that almost every single government intervention in Austria – and almost everywhere else – has been entirely ineffective from an epidemiological and medical perspective, while having caused almost unprecedented social and economic harm.
In particular, it means that lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, N95/FFP2 mask mandates, mass PCR testing and “contact tracing”, as well as “vaccine passports”, have been entirely ineffective and unjustified as interventions to “combat the pandemic”.
Of note, this is not just “post-hoc knowledge”: with the exception of school closures (which are effective against influenza), it had long been known that all of these “interventions”, including masks and contact tracing, are ineffective against respiratory virus epidemics. Concerning masks, the question is not if they are effective in theory or in some lab experiment, but if they make any difference in the real world – and the answer is no.