So do available resources. This go to argument that things that work in smaller countries don't work in the US is bizarre. It's used in all these discussions of how things that work in the EU couldn't possibly work in the US, even though the EU has a larger population.

Mostly agree 100% with you, there is one caveat: you can’t restrict travel inside the USA, so it’s harder to keep things local.

For scale it clearly should scale, and there should be efficiencies you can find in bigger countries.

Nobody is talking about the EU - we're talking about NZ and Taiwan.

New Zeland hasn't tested more per population size than the US or the EU. If the argument is scale the EU is a counter-example. If the argument is management there are literally dozens of countries that have managed things better than the US. NZ and Taiwan are just examples of where things were done particularly well, but there are plenty of others.