I find this hard to believe because the U.S. at many points in the pandemic has had fewer deaths per million than many European countries who took a very aggressive approach. Those countries include Spain, Italy, the U.K. and Belgium according to ourworldindata.org.

Those numbers have changed in recent months (as Covid numbers do tend to fluctuate) but even still statistica.com shows that the UK, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal all have a higher per-capita death toll than the US.

source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/