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.

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.