Actually some other developed countries turned out to be even worse than the US in terms of death rate. Italy got hit early when nobody had a clue. It also has an incompetent government, currently a coalition between a Trumpist party and a center left party — imagine Trump and Pelosi trying to share decision making and you get the picture. Spain has also been badly hit and its own incompetent government is also a weak coalition that is even more wilder than Italy’s — imagine Trump, Pelosi, and Ilhan Omar trying to govern together. The UK and Sweden have been badly hit, in part because both governments decided initially to let the virus run its course and create mass death. At least Boris Johnson got scared back into sanity; Sweden, which has a leftist government, proved that stupidity is not limited to right wingers. Finally, Belgium has he highest reported death rate in the world, but because it counts cases differently, its stats aren’t really comparable.
Germany did much, much better. Angela Merkel is competent. Canada also did much, much better; I had never been impressed by Justin Trudeau (unlike his father, one of the greatest 20th century leaders any country has ever had) but he did address the pandemic well. Worthy of note is that Israel also has a low death rate compared to most developed countries.
The problem is that the US is not headed in the right direction, and since Trump ordered a hostile takeover of the statistics and still hasn’t dealt with the testing problems we can’t even tell for sure where we are.