'A mess in America': Why Asia now looks safer than the US in the coronavirus crisis

SINGAPORE - In January, as Singapore racked up the highest numbers of coronavirus infections outside China, an alarmed Shasta Grant searched for flights back home to Indianapolis.

The 44-year-old American writer, who moved to this island city-state with her family eight years ago, worried that their adopted home would be ravaged again by a runaway disease and that the school where her husband teaches and their 12-year-old son studies would be closed. She feared food shortages, overwhelmed hospitals and travel bans.

But her husband persuaded her not to flee. Two months later, Singapore and other Asian nations have largely corralled their outbreaks while the virus roars across North America and Europe, leaving Grant dumbstruck at how quickly the U.S. went from a distant spectator of the epidemic to one of its primary victims.

"It feels very strange to say that I feel safer