[Goose]

These authors take issue with Genuine Realist's position:
article

"More than 120,000 Americans have now perished from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of U.S. dead during World War I. Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented?

That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer that emerges from a direct comparison of the fatalities in and policies of the U.S. and other countries — South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Singapore — indicates that between 70% and 99% of the Americans who died from this pandemic might have been saved by measures demonstrated by others to have been feasible."

Feasible for them. Not necessarily feasible for the USA. South Korea, Australia, and Singapore for certain had much larger and more capable epidemic response staff (per capita for sure and in absolute numbers in South Korea) in place and ready to go than did the US. You cannot deploy what you do not have. This is simple, and IMHO, obvious. Why was Taiwan omitted from this list of "usual suspects"? Germany was greatly blessed by the extremely professional and timely response of the Bavarian public health service to the initial outbreak. That gave them a big head start. It also wiped out the initial outbreak (in Germany. Apparently somebody went to Italy), which gave them even a larger buffer to deploy their epidemic response, which, again, was much better resourced than the ones in the US. Washington State couldn't do what Bavaria did. Neither could California. In both cases, they knew what they wanted to do, but they also knew they were not prepared to do it and didn't have the people in place to do it.

[Goose]

These authors take issue with Genuine Realist's position:
article

"More than 120,000 Americans have now perished from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of U.S. dead during World War I. Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented?

That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer that emerges from a direct comparison of the fatalities in and policies of the U.S. and other countries — South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Singapore — indicates that between 70% and 99% of the Americans who died from this pandemic might have been saved by measures demonstrated by others to have been feasible."

Feasible for them. Not necessarily feasible for the USA. South Korea, Australia, and Singapore for certain had much larger and more capable epidemic response staff (per capita for sure and in absolute numbers in South Korea) in place and ready to go than did the US. You cannot deploy what you do not have. This is simple, and IMHO, obvious. Why was Taiwan omitted from this list of "usual suspects"? Germany was greatly blessed by the extremely professional and timely response of the Bavarian public health service to the initial outbreak. That gave them a big head start. It also wiped out the initial outbreak (in Germany. Apparently somebody went to Italy), which gave them even a larger buffer to deploy their epidemic response, which, again, was much better resourced than the ones in the US. Washington State couldn't do what Bavaria did. Neither could California. In both cases, they knew what they wanted to do, but they also knew they were not prepared to do it and didn't have the people in place to do it.