“We both spent hundreds of hours in the Situation Room trying to prevent crises or dealing with them when prevention failed. Often, the issues we dealt with involved whole-of-government approaches here in the United States or working with our allies abroad. This experience got us interested in the key differences between countries that have managed the coronavirus outbreak well and those that have not.
“Fundamentally, we define success in managing the outbreak as limiting the number of cases and deaths per capita; failure is the opposite. Examples of success include South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand; all have rates of fewer than 300 cases per million people and no more than five deaths per million. Examples of failure include Spain, Italy and France, which have more than 2,200 cases per million people and death rates above 280 per million…”