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> our economy has weathered this better than anywhere in the world, and we will likely come out of this crisis even stronger, with even more global power, than we went in

Incredibly optimistic and I don't see the evidence for it. The US economy isn't out of the storm yet. Bear Sterns fell in March 2008 and the US economy kept "whistling past the graveyard" until September before it fell off a cliff after the smoke had somewhat cleared. Let's check back in 3-5 months. The only national institution in the US that didn't take a perception hit so far is the Federal Reserve, but that's because it threw $8+ trillion at the problem and made big promises early (too soon to tell if that massive injection will be problematic).

I see a national USA government who chose not to take a significant role in either helping the states (and never told the states that this would be the policy) or other nations (as we normally do during every natural disaster and health epidemic since WW2). I don't think I am alone in that view.

S Korea and Italy (yes, that Italy) sent PPE to assist other countries early in the first wave while the US federal government was intercepting shipments which were legally purchased by (entities in) other countries and diverting them to a federal government stockpile (not the states where civilians needed them).

It's worth looking at how well S Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore reacted to the outbreak. Their emergency health systems acted as if it didn't matter if "China lied" or not and set up useful policies and procedures just in case the disease made it there.

China has started to donate the medical equipment (PPE, ventilators) they didn't need to use after the first wave and they are sending medical staff around the world to assist other countries. The US is exporting some hastily-made ventilators, but it's not yet clear if that will make a difference in the perceptions other nations have of our response.

I think the US has lost significant soft power as we failed to provide the worldwide leadership we have since we became a superpower and China stood up to fill in the vacuum for very low cost to them.

> Ranked next to Western European countries, the US ranks at the bottom of worst effected. The worst effected country is Belgium, followed by France, Italy, the UK, Sweden, and so on. As far as CFR, the US is about 1/3 or Belgium, and about 1/2 of the Netherlands.

The problem is that the numbers you cite aren't about response, they are about {affected population, environment, response}. Being lucky that the USA isn't as population-dense as Belgium (which is 10x the number of people per area of the USA) isn't a strategy, it's an environmental factor.

"our economy has weathered this better than anywhere in the world, and we will likely come out of this crisis even stronger, with even more global power, than we went in" - I can't read your entire paywalled off article, but I think the US' response of basically ignoring the plight of unemployed workers and only nominally trying to save small businesses ... vs the European model of giving aid to employers and cover a fraction of employees salary as long as they don't lay off workers, is obviously going to give the European countries a head start on recovery.

Unless you're a Creative Destruction disciple. There's been a lot of destruction!

US is 9/10 on the graph of worst 10. Scroll down past the top 10 worst countries, to see all the countries with lower death rate.

The US was probably not the safest place to be with regards to covid, but it's ridiculous to imply that our leaders are all idiots who messed it all up. The data just does not support that no matter how you look at it.

I was replying to this:

>It's been far worse for countries peopled with and led by idiots, like the USA.

Maybe this person means that the majority of western europe as well as The US is peopled with and led by idiots, but it seems much more likely that they are just incredibly misinformed.

The aspect of the pandemic which impacts the USA most greatly is not the number of dead bodies, it is the loss of the perception of the USA as a global leader. Nobody thinks that Italy was key to handling the Ebola outbreak, so they did not lose their reputation over this. In fact everybody knows that Italy is a basket case led by craven criminals. But the USA was until recently viewed as the nation that could coordinate global action against pandemics. Now, everyone sees China as that nation. China is exporting masks and test kits and whatnot. USA is importing them. Officials with the German Marshall Fund, essentially a US propaganda outlet leftover from the Cold War, are going on the record discussing America's abdication of leadership.