In all seriousness, almost every aspect of the response has been a degree of failure ranging from simple missed opportunities to inexcusable catastrophic failures. The depth of the failure is frankly difficult to swallow given how devastating the loss of life and economic loss has occurred. We are in a hyper partisan state right now in our country so there is an understandable instinct that I expect a lot of people will have to reject this as nonsense, but it's important that people put their American patriotism above party instincts and look into it with as open a mind as possible and help make sure that this kind of catastrophe never again endangers us.
I could literally write 500 pages explaining in great detail all of the ways in which this was a failure, but obviously can only provide some brief broad strokes here. In short, there's a "mystique" that surrounds America and it is often thought that America has achieved a level of national greatness/ability beyond anything ever achieved in history. As it turns out, there's more than just American cockiness and good PR behind that mystique, much of that mystique is well-earned and a result of the unique ability to innovate and problem solve that is created by a large nation with open markets and strong democratic institutions. This pandemic happening here is so shocking and difficult to believe because of how extremely capable America typically is at making sure they don't. After 9/11 we all know George W Bush became obsessed with national security, but what is not really known or talked about much is that by 2005 he'd become convinced that a pandemic was the next great threat to our national security. He was so convinced of it that he made it a priority for his second term and spearheaded a comprehensive multi-agency effort to research and develop the infrastructure necessary to guard against a domestic disease epidemic. He spent billions of dollars, ran hundreds of hours of meetings, strategy discussions, and simulations, and ultimately created the most advanced biomedical defense capabilities the world has ever dreamed of. Designed with the understanding of how essential stopping a virus early is and aimed at rapidly detection of the emergence of a virus anywhere in the world followed by rapid deployment of American expertise and military-aided logistics proficiency to wherever a virus may be emerging and stamp it out very early on and before it ever reaches a point of spreading domestically in the US. It includes robust super computer AI dedicated to spotting the early warnings signs, permanent postings of investigators in every region of the world for immediate on the ground follow up of any AI warnings, and escalates rapidly from there. It was used several times with Ebola, SARS, and other scenarios we probably all remember being in the news but ultimately were just "scares." They were just scares because like a lot of things we do when we are as committed as bush admin was, the defense strategy worked. Trump dismantled all of it. All. Of. It. So in many ways, our failure happened before covid-19 ever even emerged. Thats covers a broad sketch of the most upsetting failures from the early prevention stages.
I'll finish with this one fact-based comparison that is easily verifiable for anyone who doubts it: The United States and South Korea each had their first positive tested case of Covid-19 on the same exact date in January. Since that date, the United States lost over 4% of GDP in Q1 and 2.75 million infected and 125k or so deaths. South Korea, as of TODAY, had a 1.5% GDP shrink and a grand total of 13,000 infected and around 300 deaths. Let those numbers fully sink in. South Korea used the Bush administration playbook. We did not.