South Korea's first coronavirus infection was reported on the same day as America's first infection, but South Korea practiced strict quarantine of infected people, contact tracing, widespread testing, mask-wearing and social distancing, without locking down its economy.
America did only the social distancing part after it was already too late, and then a hodge-podge of lockdowns with that.
As a result, South Korea has almost 11,000 confirmed cases today, but America has almost 1.1 million, 100x as many.
As for deaths, South Korea has 0.0000047 per million, the US 0.0001935 per million, 41x as many.
Year over year in 1Q2020, South Korean GDP actually grew by 1.3% vs. just 0.3% for GDP in the United States (BEA Table 6), 4.3x better.
South Korea has had far fewer cases of the disease, far fewer deaths and a much better economic outcome than in the United States because it wisely understood that what it had to do wasn't an existential threat to liberty.
