“America, by contrast, had the luxury of several weeks’ notice. Yet the crucial early weeks when it could have prepared for the spread of the disease were squandered...

“America’s decentralised authority, expensive health care and skimpy safety-net will all make the pandemic response harder to deal with. The uncertainty is high, but a plausible scenario—one-fifth of the population falling ill, and a 0.5% fatality rate—would lead to 327,000 deaths, or nine times that of a typical flu season.

“How America got here was the result of two significant failures—one technical, the other of messaging. A country of America’s size could probably not have avoided a serious outbreak of covid-19. But with enough information, the early spread of the disease could have been slowed. That lowers the peak of the outbreak, lightening the load on hospitals when they are most overstretched, thereby saving lives. It also gives the health service and the government time to prepare, and the population a chance to learn how to respond...

“The estimated doubling time of the virus is six days. If that remains constant, as is likely, the close-to-1,300 current cases are the bottom of a sickening ride up an exponential curve of infections.”