I think authoritarian government helps as does limited access. The access issue can be seen in the rapidly changing Brazil and Russia numbers, where things remain far better than in the US, but it's hard to tell if it will remain that way - their curves are starting to look pretty familiar.
I think having an organized competent authoritarian gov't can help.
But I think just having an organized competent gov't is the key.
An educated and unified citizenry is also a definite plus.
South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, HK, Germany have fairly competent non-authoritarian gov'ts who have gotten through the virus fairly well.
I think Russia is poised to be a huge disaster. I keep expecting things to get out of control there. The gov't is mostly a kleptocracy and I think there medical system is creaky. It's not much of a functioning country besides oil & mineral wealth and the army. But I haven't followed what measures they have taken and when. Aeroflot was still flying globally well into March. Somewhere around March 25 they shut down int'l flights. British Air and most Euro-airlines stopped flying to China in late January. Circa Jan 26, Lufthansa canceled my mid-Feb flight from Shanghai to Munich, so i just rebooked on Aeroflot. When I passed back through Moscow on March 2, they had some measures in place, but still there were crowds at the screening areas, various flights mixed together in line, no masks, no distancing, and flights to all over the world.
I keep expecting crowded poor countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to get hit really hard.
It'd be interesting to hear which countries have done well and why. Which have failed and why (there's more of that reporting out there). I wasn't aware of Belgium's complete surrender to the virus until you linked an article.
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