Opinion: The Essential Principles for Successfully Fighting the Coronavirus

In the last few days, the novel coronavirus has spread around the globe. World leaders, including the U.S. president, U.K. prime minister, French president and German chancellor, have introduced national strategies to fight the deadly disease. In a nutshell, the U.S. approach is hardening, while Europe’s is softening.

Their different approaches can be starkly seen by how they are performing tests for Covid-19. The U.S. has launched large-scale testing; by contrast, Europe has been slowing down on this front — the mainstream approach there is to only test people who meet strict criteria.