> On the other hand, the UK has done atrociously. I think the core difference here is taking things seriously. Neither the UK nor the US has actually taken this

> On the other hand, the UK has done atrociously. I think the core difference here is taking things seriously. Neither the UK nor the US has actually taken this seriously. Is it your belief that Japan (which experienced some significant community spread this winter) is "not taking this seriously"? Do you think that's true of every European country that has had large outbreaks? What do you make of there being relatively little relationship among the different U.S. states between severity of lockdown policies and cases/deaths? This is ultimately a kind of non-falsifiable hypothesis. If significant endemic spread occurs, it is simply because they "didn't take it seriously" (and there are always at least a few malingering rule breakers who can be blamed no matter where you're looking). The only data points which are examined are places where there was either strict lockdown and no spread, or "something less than" strict lockdown and some significant spread, even though globally there is a broad mix of outcomes which calls the whole relationship of lockdown severity to Covid case counts into question. I agree that earlier action might have spared us a lot of grief (although I'm not sure how long the necessary border and travel restrictions realistically could have been maintained, or whether contact tracing would have had wide buy-in), but in the timeframe it could have been done (i.e. before there was significant community spread in the U.S.) most of the people we are now admonished to defer to as "experts" were saying to be worried about the flu, bungling the testing situation, etc.