I don't claim to have all the answers, but these things could have been done and reduced the impact of the pandemic. How do I know this? Because it has been don

I don't claim to have all the answers, but these things could have been done and reduced the impact of the pandemic. How do I know this? Because it has been done by quite a few countries which did not have as much of a problem with the pandemic as the west had. Take Korea, Taiwan, New Sealand, Vietname, there are probably others. Japan also did much better than the west. A few comments to the points you noted. - Germany reacted at the end of February (I am from Germany), which was pretty late considering the international outbreaks, there were quite a few infections in Germany during February. But for the first wave, Germany reacted just in time to avoid a lot of deaths (<10k), but completely failed at preventing the 2nd wave. But even the first lockdown might have been prevented by acting in early february. Carnival was allowed to take place and it was one major outbreak, the other was Ischg in Austria. - Borders to France and Swizerland had been eventually closed. When it was pretty late. But I was more referring to the US reaction, which banned travel from China only and much later (to late) from Europe, which is still in place, but allow travel via Turkey, which is what all Europeans going to the US are using. - If you handle local outbreaks quickly, you can get infections down to 0 in the affected region. - There is plenty of evidence, that masks reduce the transmission of Covid-19, but I was also speaking in a general sense, as I said "any infectious disease". There is no need to spread the cold or flu as quickly as we used to do. As far as I know, since the pandemic, the flu numbers are down a lot, as hygene works.