Italy was the first western country to be hit with COVID. Italy is also not the richest country with the highest per capita ICU bed availability with a ridicul

Italy was the first western country to be hit with COVID. Italy is also not the richest country with the highest per capita ICU bed availability with a ridiculously expensive healthcare system which while terrible for general welfare was excellently places for an emergency like the pandemic. And if California shut down too early, it was still not a bad decision because you did not know what a good decision was at the time. The fundamental problem in the US has not been shutdowns. It’s been shutdowns which have involved absolutely no planning for the reopenings. That’s the fundamental disaster in the US handling of the situation. The northeast could maybe be forgiven for not doing planning for reopening because they were actually dealing with a crisis during the shutdown. But the rest of the country had no excuse. And unlike the northeast they weren’t the first to be hit, so they had time to see and prepare. Instead, they declared it a Northeast problem as if the virus could tell Jersey Shore residents from South beach residents, and decided to go on with their lives without any planning or preparation anyways.