I'm very familiar with the constitutions of both the United States and Germany. From what you're saying, I strongly suspect that you're only familiar with one o

I'm very familiar with the constitutions of both the United States and Germany. From what you're saying, I strongly suspect that you're only familiar with one of them. The German Federal government is highly constrained in what it can do in many areas of life, because those areas are under the control of the states. This is why there are 16 different high-school diplomas (Abitur) in Germany, for example. Formally, there is a strong division of powers and responsibilities between the federal and state level in both countries. But in both countries, the Federal government wields a great deal of informal power. The Federal government has access to much greater financial resources, which it can wield to coerce states. My personal view is that this Federal power is even greater in the US than in Germany, due to the enormous political power of the President and the greater financial power of the US government (Germany has to deal with the ECB, while as Trump has shown, the President can directly bully the Federal Reserve). If Trump had made strong statements about the need to impose quarantine measures early on, that would have had a big effect. There are many instruments at his disposal that he could have used to coerce recalcitrant state governments with. Instead, he downplayed the virus until mid-March, and has continually argued against the shutdown (see his Twitter thread). In Germany, Merkel met with the state governments, they agreed on a set of common measures, and she gave a televised address explaining those measures. She's been pretty consistent in her messaging, unlike Trump. Maybe that's because she's a physicist, and he's a real-estate mogul, or maybe it says something about what plays well in each country.