And more competently. They actually managed to make enough tests in time and use them on all known contacts of any infected individual. We're long past the point of that being remotely possible in the US.

They also use tools that Americans will never accept (especially not the HN crowd) since it violates privacy.

The main stupid thing we did was very little testing. Our genius prez kept saying it was no big deal, and they followed policies that in retrospect make it look like they were trying to test less. At least the effective situation in the end was the entire us country has 100 times less testing that the tiny country of S.K.

If we had testing and actively tested 2 months ago we'd have see the problems and started dealing with them more aggressively. We stupidly seemed to follow a policy of no visible harm, no preperations necessary.

I honestly think that the need is great enough in this case, but there's no way the powers would ever be given back.

Mind you, once enough people die, many things will change.