1. It’s amazing how common this kind of virus nihilism - there’s no way to contain it - is on here, given how empirically wrong it is. Set aside the success of big Asian countries in containing the virus. The country we should really look at is Germany. https://twitter.com/sonnycrockett04/status/1313288069383180288

2. Germany is a big country - 83 million people. It’s an open country that gets lots of travelers from other countries. It has a decentralized political system. And its population is older than the US’ - 23% of Germans are 65 or older.

3. Germany also got its first confirmed covid case around the time the US got its first case. Yet despite all that, Germany has successfully contained the coronavirus and limited the damage it’s done, while the US has not.

4. Germany’s cases per capita are around 1/7 of America’s - 304k compared to 7.7 million.

Germany has 1/4th the deaths per capita of the US - 9600 Germans have died of covid, while 215,000 Americans have.

5. Germany also has very few excess deaths this year - fewer, in fact, than the number of confirmed covid deaths. The US, by contrast, has many more excess deaths than covid deaths, suggesting the true covid death toll is higher than the already outrageous 215k.

6. Germany implemented test-and-tracing early on. It paid companies to keep workers on payroll, avoiding layoffs but also letting workers stay home. It implemented social distancing rules and targeted lockdowns early on.

7. But set aside the specifics. The real point is that Germany succeeded. It’s shown that a big, open Western country could contain the virus and keep it under control, with the right mix of good policy and good behavior.

8. So it’s wrong to say that only small island nations, or only Asian countries, have been able to limit the virus’ spread. Germany did it, too. And that means we could have. We just failed to.