In a recent NFL game, the Indianapolis Colts led the Minnesota Vikings 33-0 at halftime. At that point, Las Vegas was offering odds better than 100-1 the Colts would win, but the Vikings staged a furious second-half rally and won on a field goal in overtime. It was one of the biggest comebacks in NFL history and proved once again that it is not always possible to predict the outcome of an event before it ends.
The same is true of the COVID-19 pandemic as it enters its fourth year. In May 2020, Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget and journalist David Plotz wrote: “Back in January, the United States and South Korea each identified their first confirmed coronavirus case on the same day. South Korea responded immediately and competently, by testing, tracing, and isolating cases and getting ahead of the epidemic. The United States … never marshaled the strong federal response that could have slowed the outbreak before it really got rolling. Three months later … South Korea is close to exterminating the virus.”
In early 2021, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Lawrence Wright critiqued the U.S. COVID-19 response: “We did the worst job in the world.” Blodget, Plotz and Wright were merely echoing common sentiments of many medical observers that the U.S. had controlled COVID-19 less capably than any other country.
