Right now the cases are building up due to us now starting to test more on par with other countries.
1) We have a lower median age than Italy who is tied for 2nd oldest in the world
2) Lower population density, more spread out. The majority of our cases are concentrated in NY (our most densely populated city) which has over 13k cases, after that there's a huge drop off where every other state has like 1000 and under, NY is the epicenter right now in the US. We're 32 times the size of Italy. It seems if we can control NY we should be able slow it in other areas eventually.
3) The number of deaths in the US are not occuring at the same rate as in Italy even though we probably have more infections overall
I know that we haven't tested as much as others but we're supposedly a week or two behind Italy who has 4k+ deaths and counting while we just have 300+ deaths. We would need for people to start dying by the hundreds very soon to catch up and from what is known right now our hospitals are not reporting huge death tolls.
4) We have more ICU beds than anywhere else per capita
5) We have the benefit of having watched other countries get hit first, even with an idiot in office managing the crisis we should be able to learn to some extent more about handling the disease from China, South Korea and Japan.
Again call me stupidly optimistic if you'd like but I'd like to at least have some hope for the future instead of posting all fear mongering/doom and gloom shyt.