A lot to unpack but off the top of my head, the US was wide open compared to UK/EU; the biggest mistake initially was the communication from WHO and CDC recommending that masks were not necessary, and subsequent backtrack that eroded public confidence leading to even less compliance; mask mandates were dropped everywhere; and the worst is this insistence of combatting fomite transmission—which is completely false—having hand sanitizers installed everywhere but nowhere do you find improvements to ventilation and air filtration, for instance.

edit: and I agree a lot was done, but certainly not in any unified manner. in this age of hyper-globalized economies, countries cannot effectively act as individual entities when dealing with pandemics.

You’ve seen how the public has reacted to mask mandates. When something requires cooperation of the entire world, it’s at that point more about risk mitigation than elimination.

We have seen similar or even worse numbers in UK/EU over time. Theres a notion of being open, and then there’s public conformance.

Totally agree masking and filtration could have been massively improved, but it wasn’t known for a while that masks were the right thing. Everyone needs to give the health officials some latitude when something is brand new and being studied in real time. Of course communication could be improved, but it didn’t help it was also politically inconvenient (along with all the false information) so the comms no matter what would be challenged.