I think random comparisons are pretty much completely lacking in information. Fewer died in country X than country Y doesn't mean policy is better. Nor does "they have fewer cases", or "they have fewer deaths". A tiny outbreak will yield few dead regardless of policy. Not all small outbreaks necessarily become large outbreaks, despite poor policy (why, we don't know yet). What would impress me is a region that with sustainable and accepted policies contain an outbreak in a population with very low immunity. Or a region that can reach a high level of immunity without the disease reaching vulnerable groups.

South Korea's initial outbreak was fairly large, if I recall correctly, as it was connected with a church.

This isn't some small, statistically insignificant difference. It's a massive difference in the number of cases and deaths.

300 dead is a pretty small outbreak by today’s standards I’d say. It was the second largest after Wuhan for a short while.

They have 300 deaths and 10k confirmed cases, suggesting they have confirmed 10% to a third of all cases.

It’s also impressive that they managed to keep the outbreak so small without extreme mitigations like other places with similar outbreaks.

I don’t think that most western countries can emulate it though. Next time, perhaps (this is South Korea’s second SARS outbreak).

> I don’t think that most western countries can emulate it though

They certainly can't if they don't even... try.