Germany is doing fantastically better than the US. All the while measures have been relaxed way more here than in the US. “Lockdowns” were also never really harsh in Germany and only lasted a very short time.
Three factors are suspected to be at play there:
* very early testing that detected community spread with unknown origins very early on (using the influenza sentinel system for detection)
* luckily being late in importing the virus, which lead to …
* … politicians being able to “look into the future” by looking at Italy (a place that unluckily imported the virus quite a bit earlier)
As a result Germany relatively quickly (though Germany could have acted a bit faster and have been even more effective) implemented quite mild measures for a relatively short amount of time. Some of those measures are still in place, most were, however, lifted in the meantime.
This lead to a still enduring drop to very low numbers, extremely low numbers if you look at deaths. Even though measures at this point often are much milder than in the US.
Your defensive “numbers aren’t comparable” retort is bullshit. Mostly because, sure, the numbers aren’t comparable. Sure, that’s true. But we aren’t talking about orders of magnitude here.
Germany is doing fantastically better than the US. No matter what you measure, whether it’s infections, deaths, excess deaths, economic impact. You name it.
And yet Germany is not currently "locked down". The argument that Germany is among the best of all countries at handling this is not an argument for "if everyone just wears a mask and doesn't leave their home forever" -- that is not what happened in Germany. At all.