ETA: Speaking about the USA specifically.
Places that locked down immediately, like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and New Zealand, have mostly prevented spread within their borders, and are not experiencing the same fallout as other nations.
Other parts of the world did partial lockdowns, or mask recommendations, or nothing at all. With both my state and nation leading the charge in new cases per day, I am personally experiencing how that is going...
While the US government authorities were telling people "Masks don't work" and armies of conformists were busy shaming mask wearers for not thinking about 'our frontline workers' and nonsense like that, Taiwan just built sufficient capacity to make a mask for each person every 3 days. "Don't hoard your masks. Give them away to our precious medical personnel". Total fucking bullshit.
There are lots of people who went around telling people that masks don't work unless they're N95, that N95 don't work unless you're trained, that N95 don't work if you reuse. All total bullshit.
Don't try to rewrite history. I was there.
Everyone agrees that the US response to covid was abjectly terrible. The response should have been to suddenly and dramatically develop a capacity for producing masks. It’s true that in the early days we weren’t sure if it was transmission through air or contaminated surfaces that was more problematic, but we can already wash our hands. We can’t stop breathing.
Instead, the US president spent months attacking anyone who said covid is a problem, the CDC screwed up testing, and health authorities backpedaled on masks while giving conspiracy theory-level justifications.
I was there too. The really sad part is that now we know how to get this under control (and a few countries that really tried everything, like those listed by GP, got it right at the outset), but the politics have become so fraught that I doubt we’ll this under control in the US before it’s spread to everyone.
If that was not intended by anyone in the comment chain, then consider my comment rescinded.
I don't trust Fauci because of this.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...
Same goes for Trump and telling Bob Woodward something completely different from what he told the public.
To play devil's advocate though, there is a certain degree of "peer pressure" that countries can put against other countries to "encourage" a different response. Travel bans and negative press alone are enough to pressure countries reliant on tourism to respond differently than they normally would have.
Also the examples you listed are mostly island nations, USA and EU have basically open uncontrolled borders between members of the union so it's very hard to control migratory spreading.
This isn't fully true. Look at Australia, which all but declared victory against Covid many months ago, but has continued to need rolling lockdowns as the virus spreads as soon as the lockdowns end.
Lock downs just aren't a long-term solution, all they can do is "flatten the curve."
In most states, life is almost normal, and has been for months. In New South Wales, for political reasons, they aren’t going all-out against Covid, but even there, they’ve managed to control the virus through effective contact tracing.
Victoria, which became the worst affected state because of the second wave (from foreign arrivals), seems to have recovered well after a stringent lockdown, and is on track for full reopening.
Ultimately, Eurasia is probably too interconnected, and the US is too individualistic to make a dent in Covid, but Australia is not a good example of failed lockdowns, since lockdowns actually worked extremely well there.
Life in the rest of Australia has been fairly normal, apart from interstate travel restrictions.