And how would this be different if the virus hit a large American city as hard as it hit Italy? We would have the exact same situation.
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/
says we are on the same trajectory.
The difference with us and Italy is we have President Trump who stopped flights from China early on. Italy, a small country, had a much higher portion of people flying non-stop into it from China.