What did any other country do, except for China?
South Korea is the best (but not only) example of other countries handling it differently and better than America.
Both countries had their first case on or about the same day, around Jan 25th.
South Korea immediately took it seriously and focused on testing as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Since then they have tested ~300k people and took major steps to 'socially distance'.
From late Jan till early March, America downplayed the whole thing. The president praised China, lied about how many cases there were, blamed his political opponents for the 'corona hoax' and insisted the whole thing would basically blow over. America has 5x+ the population of SK and have tested like 30k people total.
South Korea cases are now decreasing daily. Cases in America are increasing exponentially.
These numbers might be a bit off, but you get the point.
I don't think more testing is the answer to any coronavirus related problem.
There is no cure to coronavirus, so if you test positive, doctors cannot start any kind of treatment for you. Likewise, if your symptoms are not serious, you should not be admitted to a hospital, and the question of if you should be admitted to a hospital does not change depending on if you have tested positive for coronavirus or not. Testing positive for coronavirus also does not change the direction to stay at home and use best practices period, but especially if you have symptoms.
There is also the issue of the
F1 score of tests. The F1 score is, in simple terms, how accurate the test is. If the test is accurate 90% of the time, but only 0.5% of the population who is tested actually has coronavirus, the majority of people who test positive will not actually have coronavirus. This is important for two reasons, 1) it will skew the mortality and fatality rate down, which may cause some people to not take precautions against catching coronavirus and 2) it will give everyone a false sense of security that all cases have been identified and these people are in isolation, but 10% of cases would have been missed and it is unknown how long someone can be infected with coronavirus, test negative but still be contagious. Both of these problems could cause the virus to spread faster than it might otherwise.
Testing capacity in the US is increasing, so naturally identified cases will also increase. I don't have sufficient domain knowledge of pandemics to estimate the percentage of cases identified, or the rate the actual number of cases (identified and unidentified) is growing.
I do agree that South Korea has done a good job of keeping cases under control, although I do understand some new clusters are popping up; this may be due to the problems with a lot of testing I described above. I don't think any other countries have approached the problem in a way that resulted in the same success.
Trump was the first to ban travel from China and Iran and did so in January. After Trump closed the border with Europe, nearly every other border in the world was closed or restricted almost overnight.
I'm sure this has been discussed before but Trump's response to the coronavirus has been abysmal and I'm convinced he has shot himself in the foot for his reelection chances. The Trump administration's response to the coronavirus in the ENTIRE month of February was a travel from China and that was it.
What did any other country do, except for China?
Most countries didn’t even ban travel from China. Most countries only monitored the temperature of travelers coming in from certain countries. Most of Europe/the west did not even do that.
Somehow I don't think that pointing fingers at other countries changes Trump's idiotic initial response and the current situation in the U.S. After he finally decided to listen to his advisors, Republicans tried to create the narrative of what a great leader he is, but all he really did was stand aside and let people who actually know what they're talking about do their job. Of course, your average Trumptard thinks Trump can do no wrong, but they have always been in the minority.
It would generally be good advice to let the professionals do their job, and speak to the details as to what is happening.
