I don’t want to let them off the hook for down playing this thing early on but I’m not sure how much more effective containment would’ve been if this happened in another dense country. Say Japan, India or somewhere in Europe.

I do agree that China and especially Wuhan could have acted faster - perhaps by 2 weeks though not month and a half. 1st December there was a case of pneumonia admitted to a hospital - that happens probably more than millions times a year. After 3 days it was clear that it's a viral pneumonia. That's more severe but still not uncommon. Only by the middle of the month it became clear to doctors that there are more and more such cases - but still spread through different hospitals of the 11 million Wuhan.

Obviously it takes time for this information to get to the bureaucrats. They should have done something - but then again, what? There are perhaps ~50 cases of viral pneumonia in a city the size of small country during an influenza season. If China hasn't gone through SARS it would take months to act on this information.

Well, arresting the doctors that were comparing cases in a group chat seems like a good start.

/s

I checked and the WHO team led by a Canadian epidemiologist has been working in China for more than two weeks, since Feb 10.

I fail to see why they are obligated to allow in a team from a nation that’s been openly hostile for a long time just because they asked and used the word “help”. Sounds like arrogance to me.

And in this case it'd be justified. You're talking about the rest of the world at stake. This is no place for cover-ups and minimization. Transparency is critical.

1. Testing only 400 cases across the whole country.

2. Defective test kits which will only be fixed until Mid March

3. Hawaii now asking ask Japan(which by itself is doing a horrible job at handling the situation) for test kits because they have none, and test 0 people so far.

Doesn't seem first world to me honestly. Might have South Korea gives them some lessons as how to deal with the pandemic situation. Maybe they are transparent and honest, but I really don't want to understand much more about how little they can do.

I am watching the development almost hourly everyday and so far CDC is only giving me more reasons to panic.

The CDC can legally issue emergency tests that can be distributed the way we need to. But for these to be used the FDA had to issue an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). And that couldn't happen until the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) declared this was an emergency. All of which happened.

But When the HHS declared an emergency the situation is legally considered to important for LDTs to be used, which would normally be fine. But the original CDC tests had a reagent that was incorrectly manufactured. That's being fixed but last I heard the working testing kits hadn't been distributed yet.

This is sort of a huge problem because testing for a particular viral RNA sequence isn't especially hard and it should be within the capability of even a large hospital to develop their own tests, though there is a chance they'd mess up the way the CDC did. Our whole bureaucratic structure in the US isn't set up to deal with a new disease emerging quickly and we really need to fix this.

The difference in transparency between China and the US is hard to overstate.

The idea Trump would open his response to an epidemic up to international inspection is just laughable - and I say his, rather than USA government's because that's how things appear to work there.

Or do you think a president subverting the will of the legislature of their country for personal gain isn't corruption?

I wasn't expressing my opinion.

You are expressing your political opinion about someone you dislike. You are not expressing fact. Just stop.

Imagine a Chinese provincial government openly (key word openly) going against the CCP’s wishes. Or a judge, or a prosecutor.

If only “openly hostile” was limited to “petty emotions” that can be waved away.

CDC: Center for Disease Control - a US Federal agency.

WHO: World Health Organisation - a United Nations organisation.

The 'first case' of what exactly though? Nobody knew it's effects, transmissibility, etc. etc..

I actually believe that even if said doctors were not sanctioned, not much would have really changed.

I think the delay to the authoritarian clamp-down would have been roughly the same.

In the West, we have responsible actors but they're neither entirely knowledgable (nobody is) neither do they have the widespread authority to do what China is able to do.

But much worse are places like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines ... these to me are the scary spots with high concentrations of people, crude medical practices, not a ton of gear, and no legit central authority to really turn the wheels on the disease.

And since the cat is out of the bag ... it doesn't look good.

Also, if no "known" cases are present in a specific country, the awareness to check for specific symptoms is probably lower.

That's also the curious thing about why usually the detection rate in a country rises fast in the beginning - when the first infected patient has been found, as by then doctors start to specifically test for the virus.