> lower per capita death rate than the best EU member states (Germany, Denmark).
You repeat that a couple of times in your posts, I am curious where do you get that from? Germany and Denmark are not "the best", they are both above the median in the EU.
The main point is that any criticism you might level against the US States for its supposed "lack of strategy", ought to just as easily be leveled against Germany. Instead, Germany is widely regarded as having a coordinated/successful strategy[1][2].
Even among the EU States with the fewest deaths / M — that is Hungary, Finland, Slovenia, Estonia, Poland, Croatia, Latvia, etc — you have comparable US States in Maine, Utah, Idaho, West Virginia, Oregon, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Hawaii.
You repeat that a couple of times in your posts, I am curious where do you get that from? Germany and Denmark are not "the best", they are both above the median in the EU.