If by "dropped the ball" you mean handled it better than most countries, then yes.

https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?scale=linear&data=deaths&location=Australia&location=Denmark&location=France&location=US

Handled better than most countries? Sure…

And Denial is just a river in Africa....

better than most countries huh? I see the US in the bottom 10% for cases per million and deaths per million (obviously ordered by the less the better) over at worldometers

Yup it sure isn't. The denial is seen first hand by people ignoring per capita statistics showing that several European powers with a universal healthcare dropped the ball harder than the USA.

The USA didn't handle it well, but the very transparent narrative to try and pretend they handled it worse than every other developed nation is truly hilarious. Who do people think they are fooling here when they compare the raw death count of a country with 330m people to countries with 30m-80m people?

It really is astonishing how the groupthink has taken hold. By any measure, the United States, a country that receives a great amount of traffic from China (and later Europe) should have been hit hard and fast by this illness to a much greater degree.

But, through luck and, yes, good choices, the country has limited its major breakouts to the single area of New York/New Jersey. Outside of those two states, only Michigan has suffered more than a thousand losses. California, a state with a huge amount of travel to and from China should have been ripe for for a breakout, is doing better than even Germany's celebrated response despite being an early cluster. Washington is another success story, a state hit early that quickly got its outbreak under control. Texas, another state that could easily qualify for nation status, has done even better and is eager to be the first state to reopen. Even the much-maligned Florida is doing very well.

Last week, I challenged, I think the same poster, to back up the statement that the virus had exposed deficiencies in the United States healthcare system. About 10 people answered, but zero actually provided a single shred of evidence that the United States healthcare system was doing less well than other developed nations. There were many calls of "Just wait until the peak". Well, the peak has passed. The temporary hospitals that were built in haste and naval vessels that were repaired in record time have remained largely empty as new hospitalizations fall in New York. Already we are talking about sending medical equipment overseas to places that need it more. The worst happened and the healthcare system was certainly strained, but remained in working order.

Look, I'm not saying everything was perfect by any means. If you wish to say New York dropped the ball, you'll get no argument from me. They were scandalously slow to respond, particularly in NYC, and the result has been more than half the countries cases deaths coming from that concentrated area of New York/New Jersey. Mayor De Blasio has much to answer for.

Additionally, the testing difficulties in the early days hampered the ability to accurately diagnose how far along the disease had spread. Unfortunately, that was the result of system errors decades in the making.

But rarely in a crisis does everything handled perfectly. In the end, the actual margin of error was relatively small. The reality is that the country was already beginning to shut down with less than 10 cases per million confirmed. Even New York only confirmed its first case on March 1. How much earlier did one expect the country to react?

When looked at in total, the United States performed well above-average as far as the western world is concerned. Put in perspective, it would be like if Europe only had Italy as a major breakout, with a few smaller outbreaks sprinkled around, but the majority the continent performing like Germany.

There are greater success stories to be found, particularly South Korea, and I'm glad Australia closed down at roughly the same time when they were even earlier in their outbreak. But pointing at the United States as a particular case of dropping the ball just doesn't fit with the facts, even if it does fit with a narrative.

Like I said, there's a lot of groupthink, and more than a little substandard analysis based on gross numbers (I've been warning about that in regards to SpokenTruth's charts for almost a month). If the United States were not so proportionately large, no one outside of the domestic squabbling would even take note when there are so many countries that have handled things worse and so many problems still on the horizon.

*The above is directed at the many people that were astonished that someone would say the United States responded well, not just this single poster. That so many people would be astonished at the notion of saying the United States did well is astonishing itself when the data receives even a glancing view.