As I'm sure everyone knows by now, Europe experienced a "second wave" of Coronavirus cases, with absurdly large increases in case numbers.
What I'm trying to understand is how this is happening to the magnitude that we currently see. The USA does the absolute minimum for limiting virus spread, and within a month, many European countries were registering case counts that, on a per capita basis, absolutely dwarfed the USA.
I initially thought it must simply be a drastic difference in the testing coverage, but if I look at the positivity rates:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/international-comparison
The US is not actually doing bad at all. In fact, if anything, most European countries have positivity rates that are dangerously high, while the US appears to be sitting at ~6-7%.
I also considered that it might be usage of less accurate tests (ex. Rapid Antigen tests), but the increase in deaths and hospitalizations for most European countries is falling right in line with what might be expected from the enormous increase in cases.
Does anyone have any insight into this? It makes absolutely no sense that countries that actually take precautions are somehow doing worse than the US, which takes nearly none.
Note: I would like to make clear that I am not insinuating any sort of conspiracy here. I personally believe that trying to contain the virus is virtually useless at this point, but I am genuinely interested in how this massive spike even occurred.