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I believe the area under the curve would have been about the same no matter who was President and who said whatever as President.  It could have been less ... colorful, which I would have preferred.

Resultwise, hard to see much difference.

My issue is that it's hard to credit someone who has been consistently one direction ideologically, and then crediting that person when their ideological stance just HAPPENS to line up with the data.

• POTUS, for example, gets credit by some for shutting down travel from China. He's spent the last four years trying to stick his thumb into China's eye, so I hardly call this a courageous stance when literally everything else he did was downplay the virus. Likewise, he pushed for opening up schools, but let's face it, he wanted to open up EVERYTHING. So I find it hard to believe we should credit him for calling to open up schools and take him seriously as if suddenly he's following the science.
• On the opposite side I look at Newsom. Newsom's response was aggressive, but then he became a petty tyrant of "let's close it down" at every whiff of anything. He seemed to do this without good explanation or scientific reasoning other than "shut everything down" all the time. He didn't have control over gatherings, so he used the only too at his disposal, and shut down commerce even when many of the things he was shutting down weren't actual drivers of transmission.

And of course everything turned political, so nobody trusted anything from anyone.

My issue is that it's hard to credit someone who has been consistently one direction ideologically, and then crediting that person when their ideological stance just HAPPENS to line up with the data.

• POTUS, for example, gets credit by some for shutting down travel from China. He's spent the last four years trying to stick his thumb into China's eye, so I hardly call this a courageous stance when literally everything else he did was downplay the virus. Likewise, he pushed for opening up schools, but let's face it, he wanted to open up EVERYTHING. So I find it hard to believe we should credit him for calling to open up schools and take him seriously as if suddenly he's following the science.
• On the opposite side I look at Newsom. Newsom's response was aggressive, but then he became a petty tyrant of "let's close it down" at every whiff of anything. He seemed to do this without good explanation or scientific reasoning other than "shut everything down" all the time. He didn't have control over gatherings, so he used the only too at his disposal, and shut down commerce even when many of the things he was shutting down weren't actual drivers of transmission.

And of course everything turned political, so nobody trusted anything from anyone.

politicians did what they do.  try to garner votes
the scientists didn't have a clear consistent message on this because they couldn't figure it out.
Scientists, Medical experts, politicians, and other "leaders" all around the world failed to effectively curb the virus.

some may have done a slightly better job than others, but the virus is the clear winner

regardless of medicine, science, politics or clear consistent messages

The Asian countries have done a much better job and I'd like to understand why.  It is less prevalent in Africa as well, if the records are to be believed.

Which Asian countries?  South Korea looks to have done well.  Japan did early on but we know they were falsely reporting to try to save the Olympics.  Then they sort of trued it up, then they had a third wave about the same time as most other countries.

The data from China is completely crap and therefore irrelevant.

And as for Africa, I doubt they're bothering to track it that closely, outside of the larger more affluent countries like South Africa.  But the middle of that continent is riddled by so many other diseases and generally poor health conditions that kill at much higher rates, I don't think they're going out of their way to track cases or deaths from a disease that initially presents as a bad flu. I doubt they're doing much testing at all.

Maybe it's not affecting Africa much, but there's no real reason to believe that's the case.

Of fairly developed Asian countries,  South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand (I include them as part of Asia even though they aren't).  The best European country is apparently Finland at 8,157 cases per million.

Australia is 1,122.  Is that solely because they are an island continent?  Maybe.  South Korea is kind of an island in a sense.

Indications are that it is not running rampant through southern Africa which one might have expected.

Information from Africa is suspect in detail, but I think were it running rampant it would be noticed.  We get reports of various attacks and calamities from Africa, we know when other diseases break out, I think if COVID were really bad it would show up more than it has.

Maybe countries like South Korea have managed simply by managing influx of visitors aggressively, which they can do.

I don't know, which is why I said it merits looking into.  It could be the virus is raging there and we don't know it.

It also may be that island nations can control it more easily for obvious reasons.  It would be masks are quite beneficial.