“The US did succeed at flattening the curve — at least at first. Businesses closed and most states issued stay-at-home orders, and later research concluded those lockdown measures helped prevent tens of millions of Covid-19 cases.
But America failed to take advantage of that window to ramp up its testing-and-tracing capabilities, and states quickly faced intense pressure to relax their policies to alleviate the economic costs of the shutdowns. Reopening began earlier than public health experts believed it should. The political will to impose new lockdowns had evaporated by the time cases spiked again.”