Covid-19 disease is subject to two mathematical properties. The first is the transmission coefficient, which under normal human-to-human contact conditions is greater than 2.0, with a doubling time of only a few days, similar in principle to an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. The second is the incubation period, usually two weeks, so that if a strict separation is maintained between people for at least this period of time, the transmission coefficient is reduced and the epidemic can be mitigated or suppressed.
Thus, the cost of delay in applying strict measures is counted by the number of infected and dead in the first wave, by the spatter of positive cases throughout the landscape, and by the risk of secondary or tertiary outbreaks if they do not remain strong. controls passed the first wave.
The poor performance of the United States in this crisis was due to a combination of factors, all of them related to the diminishing competition of the public authority. The American ex ante system was effectively adapted to the conditions of an individualized and unequal society, but fragile, uncoordinated, and inadequate to face a common threat. Free market ideology and conservative social doctrine have underpinned this system and obscured its vulnerability to the point of suppressing scientific evidence and political efforts to maintain a common defensive capacity.