I think it's possible to say both "the US response has been very bad" and also "Progressives have been leaping at any comparison to make the US look bad because they basically feel embarrassed about America anyways and confirmation bias is strong." https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1310712684342644736

It is in fact possible that the US response has been worse than it should have been and also that the European response has been worse than it should have been, and that pretty much "the response" was determined by..... let's say March 1.

Once the disease was widespread in many countries, as it clearly was by early March, it's not clear how much influence governments could really wield in terms of preventing a major death spike.

There were definitely policies that could make the spike a bit smaller or larger in a specific local area, the problem though is that the defining feature of the death toll isn't "did you make it a bit less bad in New York" but "will it also spread to Texas."

In the long run deaths are determined not by intensity of penetration in a given community, but by the geaographic extent of spread, which is why in Feb-April I was quite-seriously telling state and local governments to set up roadblocks.

Look, one reason we had more notice than Italy despite having a lot more travel to/from Wuhan than Italy is, wait for it....

.... because Trump actually *did* act very early to restrict travel to China, and Europe was much slower on this! https://twitter.com/MichaelDKarras/status/1310716280836517891

The problem is Trump didn't restrict travel to Europe. What should have happened is after human-to-human transmission was confirmed, we should have just grounded all flights in/out of the US, sealed the borders, and set up a wartime rationing board.

Roadblocks at every state line, call out the national guard, roll tanks down the street, etc, etc. Militarize the entire response. Strike terror into the hearts of the people.

And then by May it would have been over and we'd all be like "wow Trump was SO AUTHORITARIAN"

Instead we were like, "hm, well, what if we kinda sorta restricted a little travel."

So look, I fault Trump. He should have done the full-on "The President is basically a dictator if Congress isn't paying attention" thing.

But instead the entire Western world was like, "meh, let's just let hundreds of thousands of bodies pile up; anything to avoid having to actually respond in a quick and coherent threat to the people."

And it was the entire Western world. European doctors were just as anti-mask as American ones. European officials were even more anti-travel-rules than American ones at first (they've come around now).

Which is all really insane since the data from past diseases suggests travel restrictions were actually very effective. It still is just insane to me that we didn't really do any actual mobility restrictions.

But hey instead of getting on a war footing for three months we get to all have a range of personal liberties curtailed for months or years.

Wildly enough, one of the better responses has been in Canada, which had a VERY bad early outbreak in Montreal.

A key part of Canada's response is they staffed nursing homes and high-risk facilities *with uniformed military personnel*.

They were like, "well, these guys are young, healthy, and already willing to die in principle; so they can change bedpans for a few months."

Here's just one of manye xamples of Canada's vaguely militarized response: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/26/canadian-military-details-horrific-conditions-in-nursing-homes-battling-covid-19-282605

Canada, as I can attest, also has irritatingly complete border controls up. Though they should really work on getting at-the-border rapid testing set up!