In 2019, I would have guessed wrong about how a hypothetical COVID-19 would play out.
I'd have pointed out that the US would unequivocally be one of the best nations at recovering from such a challenge:
- Spent the prior 4 years warning the world that something like this could happen
- Well prepared for this eventuality (stockpiles), have recently conducted dry run rehearsals for this exact eventuality, until recently had a funded unit of government for exactly this scenario
- Has world leading healthcare
- Has world leading pharma industry
- Has money, scientists, doctors & other resources out the wazoo
- Is a competent nation with a history of excellent execution in almost all theatres
Conversely i'd have argued totalitarian regimes would have performed the worst because of the politics of a regime like that - everything gets covered up. You'd have insufficient visibility to even begin to mount an effective response.
Everything you said is true but add a populist crackpot President, a huge alt-medicine quackery industry, and a significant fraction of the population that believes absolutely asinine things about vaccines and medicine. The USA would have had a great response to COVID if it weren't for American anti-intellectualism.
Not all totalitarian regimes have been handling COVID well. Russia hasn't done any better than most European countries and may have done worse if they're cooking their numbers (which is likely). Iran has done poorly. The thing that I think made China do well is a combination of an obedient authoritarian society and a large number of scientists and engineers in positions of authority. An authoritarian society is very good at problems of the form "have everyone do X," but that only works if X is the right thing.
Nobody benefits but who gets hurt the least? Totalitarian regimes are inherently more capable of dealing with the problem for obvious reasons.