In Finland, COVID-19 has been largely contained since May. The people trust their government politicians and believe in science. No one I know here can believe that Americans would turn wearing a mask into a political litmus test. The social safety net is tightly woven: Finns aren’t homeless on the streets; they aren’t shooting one another on the barricades.

Finland recently released an app that lets us know if we have encountered someone who tested positive, and it says something about my adopted country that 20% of the population signed up on the first day. Online data show the seven-day average of new cases per million in Finland at about 14; in the U.S., it’s about 130.

We eat out (on terraces), get haircuts, visit museums. We worry about a second wave. But what this country did once to flatten the curve, it will doubtlessly do again if the number of new cases rises markedly.