"shoe-leather public health"

As awful and anxiety-inducing as pandemics are, they're aren't rocket surgery.  That is to say, countries like the US and UK are needlessly suffering from something that, with enough will and appropriately applied resources, could have been mitigated to points approaching "back to normal."  I'll never shut up about how excellent South Korea's response was to the virus, but Vox walks us through some other "success stories" in much poorer countries:

"From Slovenia to Jordan to Iceland, governments took early action to impose lockdowns, test and trace thousands of people, isolate the sick, encourage social distancing and preventive measures like mask wearing, and communicate honestly with the public.

Those interventions curbed the number of new confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths, allowing leaders to reopen schools and businesses and reintroduce a sense of normalcy into everyday life. Some are now reporting no new confirmed cases or deaths.

In effect, they followed the prescribed playbook for such a pandemic, and — surprise, surprise — it worked.

'At the end of the day, it’s not magic. It’s shoe-leather public health,' Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told me. Nothing is a better substitute for speed and aggressive action, he said."

To expect no deaths in America, given its status as a global hub of travel, would be ridiculous.

To see the US president basically throwing his hands up now and telling us the death of your grandparents is worth it as long as shareholders don't lose their shirts is completely is pornographic.