Four leading Israeli researcher argue that a correct reading of the Swedish experiment of a more relaxed approach shows that, despite early localized setbacks, it has been a success – and its success helps explode the three myths which have led governments around the world to impose unnecessary lockdowns. Sarah Knapton writes that an official U.K. government report says that more than 200,000 people could die from the impact of lockdown. Robert Peston writes that the cost of COVID-19 in the U.K. was unnecessarily high, and Yoon K. Loke and Carl Heneghan write that in the U.K., the number of COVID-19-related deaths is so high because “no one can ever recover from COVID-19”: A patient discharged from the hospital after being treated for COVID-19 will still be counted as a COVID death — even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.

It is difficult to think of another country that has botched the response to the coronavirus more spectacularly than the United States. Joel Achenbach, William Wan, Karin Brulliard, and Chelsea Janes write that the death rate from COVID-19-19 in the United States looks like that of countries with vastly lower wealth, health-care resources, and technological infrastructure, adding: “If there was a mistake to be made in this pandemic, America has made it.” Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, and David E. Sanger write that the roots of the U.S. current inability to control the pandemic can be traced to mid-April, when the White House began to focus on shifting responsibility for leading the fight against the pandemic – which was becoming a public health, economic, and political disaster — from the White House to the states.

Wearing a face mask has become a political issue. J. Alexander Navarro writes that this was also the case during the 1918 pandemic. Beginning Monday, wearing face masks in public will be mandatory in France, and Valentin Hamon-Beugin writes [in French] that several French start-ups have developed technologies which would allow the authorities to monitor citizens’ compliance with the new rule.