The US lacks decisiveness ("you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing after all other options are exhausted" etc) but has the ability to mobilize (state capacity). We're just only good at one thing - war metaphors.

So we can't keep a lockdown going because that's not a war. But we can do vaccines great, that's just metaphorically shooting people.

>"So we can't keep a lockdown going because that's not a war."

I am not from US (live in Canada) but my impression is that the US population is in general way less subservient to the government comparatively to other countries. This could be just the reason you could not lock them up.

>"But we can do vaccines great, that's just metaphorically shooting people"

I find this conflation very poor

> The US has never lacked the decisiveness and the ability to mobilize.

It's dithering in both World Wars (among many, many other examples) would lead many people to question the decisiveness side of that.

Not sure about WWI events but from what I understand WWII did not pose immediate danger to the US and there was no pressing need for them to decide. From what I understand they were even happy to trade with the Germany. Once Pearl Harbor happened it changed the picture.