in Germany in January people talked about: - well, it's China, you know, they don't have nice hospitals there - the flu is killing people too and you're not vaccinated! - our democratic society will be much better at containing that, people are mord open - the methods in China are soooo stoneage, we are good at contact tracing.

So: no, there was no objective reason to think it would not go global, but it was faaaar away...