The pandemic experience has been very illuminating.

Open, democratic societies have trouble getting everyone on the same page, there's a lot of contention and disagreement, BUT they have fairly transparent numbers, and as much turbulence as there is they figure it out, although with a higher mortality rate. Also, the very existence and production of the MRNA vaccines, clonal antibodies, etc... is thanks to Western style universities/pharma research/innovation focused economies.

In less open countries, they do a great job at containment, but as we're seeing here, they get stuck without solutions that can extricate them from the issue, especially when they refuse Western vaccines.

Both systems have strong and weak points, but I'm happy that I have the good fortune to live in a mostly open and democratic society when it all shakes out.