Suppose Trump in January — or even in February — had warned the public of the dangers, had ensured that accurate tests were widely distributed (Sierra Leone had tests available before the United States) and had built up a robust system of contact tracing (Congo has better contact tracing than the United States). Suppose he had tried as relentlessly to battle the virus as he has to build his wall? If testing and contact tracing had been done right, then we would have known where hot spots were and large-scale lockdowns and layoffs might have been unnecessary. The United States would still have made mistakes. But many of our peer countries did better than we did not because they got everything right but because they got some things right — and then learned from mistakes.

Source: New York Times September 12, 2020 18:33 UTC