I can add that I was at a podium discussion with the chinese ambassador in my country, over bilateral/EU economic relations (sounds much fancier than it was (its an open forum thing)), right around the time when Covid 19 started showing up in the news ('china building high capacity in makeshift hospitals' was the news of the day).
Where he was asked exactly all those questions on a panel. ('We do not believe in the numbers, chinese actions currently are much harsher, numbers reported must be wrong.') And while answering every question 100% rhetorically perfectly non comital - the impression you left with was -- china is a big country as well, hard to govern - you try that with full transparency and openness, because the leadership there cant.
That said, china did pretty much a textbook job on this. Scientific cooperation was in place, international coordination was in place - once italy went into crisis state.
They didn't know much about the virus when it all started, they did most of the preliminary research, they shared information.
US members of congress were briefed in late february, that this will be a pandemic the likes of which the world had seen last 100 years ago.
People started to sell stock, and insider trading at that time, while still posting on twitter, that this was overhyped by 'media'.
What does that mean? Adequate action in the US might just have been too costly.
Why am I saying that?
https://www.countable.us/articles/4...obamacare-enrollment-pandemic-do-support-move
Mindset seems to be, you are managing fallout anyhow. Just make it look decent. Focus on the economy. Attend to people with emergency measures.
This doesnt excuse two months of basically inaction (South Korea reacted two months prior), but it explains it.
Also - maybe it took about a month for the penny to drop in some smaller western countries. Thats entirely possible, for the bigger ones... Id's say no, impossible - but thats just my opinion, without sources.
