[Goose]

Size and mobility also, I believe, play a role. S.Korea is about the size of Indiana. Germany - Montana.  I do believe it’s easier to control a Pandemic and engage in contact tracing etc when you are dealing with a significantly smaller geographic area.  Relative homogeneity and  cultural norms that respects and follows authority also helps.

Absolutely true. Smaller areas are much easier to deal with, particularly when you are trying to exclude disease injection from outside. New Zealand is a great example of that, as is Taiwan. Both control their borders very well, and ensure that all people entering the country go through the 14 day quarantine. Germany is now stuck with allowing EU people to enter, and some of the State health departments are not happy with that at all. We will see what happens.

That said, Germany does its track and trace mostly at a State level. Plenty of car, air and train travel from the rest of the EU. One could view the Bay Area, or California as a geographic entity. Certainly early on Oregon and Nevada weren't hurting us. Air travel undoubtedly was, but we did absolutely nothing to deal with it. Relative homogeneity and  cultural norms that respects and follows authority helps a lot. However, Italy isn't known for following orders real well. They didn't until there were Carabinieri/Troops on every major street corner. That got their attention. Not going to happen in California though.

[Goose]

Size and mobility also, I believe, play a role. S.Korea is about the size of Indiana. Germany - Montana.  I do believe it’s easier to control a Pandemic and engage in contact tracing etc when you are dealing with a significantly smaller geographic area.  Relative homogeneity and  cultural norms that respects and follows authority also helps.

Absolutely true. Smaller areas are much easier to deal with, particularly when you are trying to exclude disease injection from outside. New Zealand is a great example of that, as is Taiwan. Both control their borders very well, and ensure that all people entering the country go through the 14 day quarantine. Germany is now stuck with allowing EU people to enter, and some of the State health departments are not happy with that at all. We will see what happens.

That said, Germany does its track and trace mostly at a State level. Plenty of car, air and train travel from the rest of the EU. One could view the Bay Area, or California as a geographic entity. Certainly early on Oregon and Nevada weren't hurting us. Air travel undoubtedly was, but we did absolutely nothing to deal with it. Relative homogeneity and  cultural norms that respects and follows authority helps a lot. However, Italy isn't known for following orders real well. They didn't until there were Carabinieri/Troops on every major street corner. That got their attention. Not going to happen in California though.