Besides Italy did start to apply lockdown measures to specific towns, and closed schools when they had 20 cases. It was insufficient but at least it was an attempt. The US has had clusters out of control in Washington state for almost as long and the federal agencies were actually trying to silence them. And another in NYC, which is basically the economic powerhouse of the United States.

And it should've been clear with all the data we had that it would be. Don't get me wrong, I don't think any of the other western countries does it right. Italy got unlucky because it was the first country where shit hit the fan. Might as well have been Germany if they wouldn't have gotten lucky in stopping the spread from their Bavaria case. But I fully stand by my point anyways that no country in the west did a good job, and points like yours are weak excuses at best, since it basically boils down to "well we're delaying taking down our economy a bit and make sure the rest of Europe suffers too, so we're not as ducked in comparison to them." There's certainly some logic to that, but it shows how shallow our advanced civilized world really is.

FWIW I totally agree.

> Might as well have been Germany if they wouldn't have gotten lucky in stopping the spread from their Bavaria case.

Yes, that's what Italy was hoping to do. They didn't realize how contagious this thing is.