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I wouldn't call 10% difference significantly higher... more like within the margin of error.

With such drastic policy differences you would expect to see a larger effect.

The EU didn’t act as one entity in the epidemic/lockdown/furlough policies. In particular Eastern European countries went with US-like policies (and less vaccine provision and even more anti accents) and and suffered more than the US.

The Nordics, France and German-speaking countries have half the death rate of the US or less, in some cases even negative excess deaths.

The US didn't act as one entity either.

Well, I'd say the biggest difference was that in the EU, many countries would give you 80% unemployment to stay home for many months.

In the US, you'd get a few thousand $, many months later. So yeah, you might have had a similar chance to catch COVID but your livelihood and financial security were much more secure in Europe.

Policy-wise w/r/t COVID, EU and US are nowhere near NZ, Tiawan or China. Now that's containment taken seriously and it shows.

Many in the US made significantly more on the combination of enhanced unemployment and stimulus checks than they had made working. Greater than 100% previous wage.

You can see the aggregate personal income data here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PI

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