Sure, but the U.S. is actively discouraging/thwarting testing efforts, because ~the economy~. And our chief executive is disseminating misinformation (whether out of ignorance or ulterior motives is unclear).

I'm not saying China did a great job. But they seem to have gotten a handle on things at least, meanwhile we've yet to even really start preparing. And we have the advantage of hindsight, which they didn't have.

> they seem to have gotten a handle on things at least

According to the Chinese communist party.

They can fudge the specifics, but I highly doubt they could hide the fact of whether or not it's continuing to explosively spread across the country.

They did a horrible job in the beginning and a good job in the end. They wasted december and january (both for themselves and the world) but the february response was quite effective. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... is an informative illustration.

Right now, the USA response is somewhere between those two China approaches but it seems that it has been closer to the "early China" response than to the "late China" response.

And how do you account for the fact the US have been known this virus for a month since the Chinese outbreak, and still does very little to prepare for basic things like testing?

I'm pretty sure when those officials decided to silence the whistleblowers, they are thinking exactly what some of the US officials are thinking right now: "Just another flu."