The figures suggest that the United States squandered its potential advantages, like two additional weeks of lead time for preparation and a single national government with superior resources. The U.S. response has fallen mainly to state and local authorities, yielding an even less unified response than in Western Europe. Most Western European governments have enacted stringent social-distancing measures that go beyond what has been implemented in much of the United States.

Western Europe appears to have had more success in testing as well. It has conducted at least twice as many tests as the United States, and probably far more. (Much of that European data is out of date, as many nations do not appear to frequently update their published figures on testing).

There is no guarantee that current trends will continue. But if you’re looking to compare the United States to anywhere in the world, Western Europe is your best bet.

Western Europe, as we are defining it, has a population of 320 million, nearly the same as the population of the United States, at 330 million. Its population is affluent and distributed fairly similarly to the United States, with a mix of urban and rural areas and no single city dominating the population. And as in the United States, some parts of Europe, like the Lombardy region of Italy, have suffered severe coronavirus outbreaks while other parts have largely gone unscathed.

The fundamental similarity of the coronavirus outbreaks in the United States and Western Europe is difficult to glean from many of the comparisons recently being made between the United States and individual countries. Popular charts of growth in coronavirus cases or deaths over time, for instance, measure the outbreak in terms of raw numbers, without an adjustment for population, and show the many nations of Western Europe well beneath the United States. The gap closes quickly if the nations of Western Europe are combined.