With COVID-19 cases in the US hitting 5 million on Sunday, the failure of the most powerful nation in the world to contain the virus has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe. Perhaps nowhere outside the US is America's bungled virus response viewed with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of Europe's epidemic.

Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn't have when the first COVID-19 patients started filling ICUs.