On several issues...
I'm not clear on what constitutes 'an issue of choice' and not. What constitutes 'strickter' in the US? Drinking age? Penalty? Seems off topic, so feel free to skip.
The US was always destined...no, you are cherry picking two cities with different population densities and implying that these two cases tell us all we need to know about lockdowns. You are cherry picking the same states that the right seems to default to.
Top ten states by deaths per 100k
State / Deaths per 100k / Population per sq mile / Population density Rank
NJ / 288 / 1210 / #1
NY / 269 / 417 / #7
MA / 256 / 858 / #3
RI / 252 / 1017 / #2
MS / 242 / 63.7 / #32
AZ / 238 / 58.3 / #33
CT / 227 / 742.6 / #4
AL / 223 / 95.4 / #27
LA / 223 / 107.1 / #23
SD / 222 / 11.1 / #46
I think those numbers speak pretty well for themselves. Deaths per 100k should be higher at higher population densities. Social distancing becomes harder, diseases spread more easily, etc. And they kind of do for the blue states with the highest population density. But South Dakota? How the hell did they end up in the top 10? Social distancing should have been business as usual.
I didn't brush off culture with Sweden. They respect their doctors and trust their medical system. They were given medical advise and acted like adults. In hindsight, we should have have just started wearing masks and told all the conspiracy theorists on the right not to wear masks. I don't think anyone expected that to be a political issue. Ah well, live and learn. Everything is a political issue when you think of people who disagree with you as the enemy.
Economic recovery - The more populated states have a tendency to rely more on services like restaurants and tourism. I'm assuming that plays into it. If you know of a better analysis I'd be interested. Perhaps it is a matter of being more strict, but if rates go up, places will lockdown again. Even if they resisted, few are going to plan a vacation to a place with spiking cases.
I show 23 Democratic Governors and 27 Republican governors. Only 7 states didn't initially shut down. Quite a few postured as I recall, but in the end they flinched.
No way to avoid a worse turnout - nobody can see what might have been. I assume that we successfully suppressed the curve. To my knowledge, most states didn't blast through their medical capacity. It was close. That was my big worry, because the death rate would have gotten worse if people couldn't get oxygen or a bed.