WAIT, FOR MONTHS THE PRESS WAS TELLING ME THAT BORIS JOHNSON’S INCOMPETENCE MEANT EVERYONE WAS GOING TO DIE: The U.K.’s Response to Covid-19 Has Been World-Class: One country has done more than any other to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

In sum, the best life-saving medicine and the best candidate vaccine both come from the U.K. For sure, there might be some elements of coincidence here, but the same can be said for the more effective public-health responses as well.

By the way, if you are looking for the second leading candidate in the race to fight Covid-19, the most plausible answer is the U.S., which has produced the useful antiviral remdesivir and is working on a broad array of vaccine candidates, with generally promising results, even if none of them is as far along as the work at Oxford. The U.S. may yet pass the U.K. for overall contributions, but as of mid-July in per capita terms the British are the winners by a landslide.

Well, that kind of harshes the narrative, doesn’t it?