[mattchew]

This seems like a fairly common view to people who have come late to the topic.

If you have been paying attention for a while, the way the USA has handled this is horrifying.

Compare the outcomes in Italy to those in South Korea to see what good handling of this crisis looks like.

Even though we had the example of Italy weeks ago, we waited and waited and waited until now. Our outcomes will be similar to Italy's in a great deal of the USA.

The worst thing was the terrible, terrible failures in testing. We will never know exactly how many lives could have been saved if we ramped up testing the way South Korea did. We will be able to make some rough guesses after we get the final body count.

Trump also did enormous damage by continuously, repeatedly dismissing the new Coronavirus as no worse than the flu. Foot dragging and denial are natural anyway; having the president constantly dismiss the worst epidemic since 1918 as alarmism from whiners delayed action at the state and local levels, never mind all the action that wasn't being taken at the national level. There are still many people--maybe a majority in my area--who think this is all overblown panicking over nothing.

Here's the best I can say. The travel ban was a good idea and would have saved lives if we had not chosen to throw away the extra lead time it gave us. And most of Europe handled this just as poorly as we did, if that seems justifying to you (it does to some people).