The US had a 2x mortality rate of Canada. 6x higher compared to South Korea, 10x of Japan the first two years of Covid. Even going with the lowest number, about 500,000 Americans could have survived with even marginally competent leadership. One that might not have…

1. Disbanded the Pandemic response team Obama set up.
2. Undercut the messaging from the CDC because Trump couldn’t handle Fauci having a higher approval rating than him.
3. Spewed constant misinformation about everything from bleach, sunlight to ivermectin while professionals were desperately trying to do their job.
4. Intentionally dragging his feet on the relief effort because someone told him that it was hitting the cities first and the Democrats would be most affected.
5. Goddamn masks. All he had to do was go on TV and tell his little cultists to wear the damn things, and we could have prevented so much of the deaths that came from the original strain/Delta. (Not Omicron)

… Hitler killed less Americans than Trump did. That’s just facts.

I lived in Korea for a while and the biggest difference is how our cities are set up from the get go.

Korean cities are dense. NY dense. Buildings generally go up instead of out. Shops on the base floors, but also a lot of commercial buildings with 5+ levels of shops.

You generally don’t have to walk more than a mile in any direction to get anything you need at any hour of the day, even in smaller satellite cities. There’s usually at least a corner shop or two within a few hundred feet of your apartment entrance.

Subways are generally within a 10~15 minute walk. That connects you to anywhere in the greater Seoul area. Cabs are plentiful, you can hail one down on any major street in minutes if not seconds if you’re in a hurry. The cities are designed around walking. Wide sidewalks, overpasses everywhere, and the density makes it so anywhere you go feels a bit like walking in an outdoor shopping mall would in the US. You can’t walk more than a quarter mile without hitting another cluster of shops.

The area I lived in probably had a 100+ shops in a 2 mile(?) radius and it was a smaller city in the outskirts of Seoul called Buchun. Everything from smaller corner stores to chain restaurants & Korean versions of multi-story Walmart/Costco etc. I’m guesstimating a bit, but I never walked longer than 30 minutes to get to anything I needed.

Sure, you can drive, but walking works just fine. No one NEEDS a car if you live in a city in Korea.

The high speed rails just complements all this infrastructure to connect the cities. We don’t have any of the other stuff necessary to really make this work the same way. That last mile is the killer. If you need to drive to the rail, ride it, get off and find another car to your final destination, most folks would just opt to drive the whole way. Especially if you also factor in the return trip, or the need any degree of flexibility.

In the US, high speed rail would almost function like a plane. In Asia, it’s more like… one part of a comprehensive public transportation system.

I live in Austin in one of the expensive areas considered to be ‘walkable’, but the closest bagel shop from my house is still a 10 minute walk away. If I want to get to the breakfast place I like, it’s 20 minutes from my front door. Only thing I pass in between those two are a bunch of tattoos shops and I think a yoga studio, and some architect firm. Oh, I guess we have a few food trucks now too. They’re usually closed in the mornings when I walk anywhere.

The rest of it is just houses. If I wanted to get to the downtown rail station, it’s a 30 minute walk and I have to walk under the highway and get accosted by homeless folks on occasion. (Most of them are cool, there’s a few that are not).

Oh, and there’s no shade anywhere and it’s Texas. Five months out of the year we hit 90~100+ degrees and you’d need a change of clothes by the time you get anywhere you’re going.

American cities are just not designed for it. We have everything spaced too far apart.