"What if this is as good as it gets?"

[FlyingScot]

Originally Posted by Bigstan

Agree to disagree.

I'll rephrase it a different way that may be a bit more apt -

We shouldn't care what the world thinks of us, they should worry what we think of them.

I'm not sure we disagree on the ideal.

My point was that our performance as a country with respect to COVID-19 has made the world less interested "in what we think of them", to use your phrase. I don't think there's any aspect of our performance that has been admired by others. We have more cases, more economic disruption, less testing...than an exceptional country should. I think we probably agree on that too.