> I haven't heard any reputable source suggest there was any practical way of containing it perfectly.

Of course there was. If they somehow magically divined the true danger of the virus the day they identified it.

But they didn't, it took time and observation, and they shut down the affected areas as soon as the extent of danger was realized and processed by their bureaucracy. There's plenty of things here that could've been done better, but it's asinine to blame them for the virus taking hold everywhere else. Doubly so given that most of the world had a month+ warning before they registered their first cases.

>> processed by their bureaucracy

That is the issue here. They completely ignored it until people were dying in the hallways of hospitals and then implemented a draconian policy.

And now they're locking up anyone who criticizes them. See this article about "Gratitude education", a term that tops Orwell in its dystopian implications:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/gratitude-educ...

Where did you read that people were "dying in the hallways of hospitals"?

Italian doctors have been writing about this since ~Tuesday. There's loads of reports and newspaper articles about it. They're in full-on triage mode, and there isn't time or manpower to give people even palliative care.

So, It seems that China did some things very wrong in the beginning, but then took some big actions to turn things around. There was a long form piece in the Wall Street Journal last weekend that looked at the timeline. It seems that in the early phases, authorities didn’t want to have bad news leading up to the end of year / New Years period. There was suppression of information coming out about there being a novel virus — to the extent the doctor had to offer a public apology for ‘spreading rumors’ — dots weren’t connected, etc. The Wuhan banquet wasn’t cancelled, number of cases exploded shortly after.

And, look — I’m sitting here in the US where I’ve been horrified at our own response over the last month. But the question was, could it have been contained? Looking at that timeline, it certainly seems possible that it could have been. Of course, we’ll never know.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early...

> What exactly do you suggest China ought to have done to prevent it from spreading outside of China?

Well, at the very least, take it seriously when there were the first reports of "new viral pneumonia" in Wuhan, instead of locking up or censoring people who reported that.

Yes, this doesn't mean that other countries did not take it as seriously as they should have, and perhaps containment might have failed nevertheless. Still, it was a spectacular failure with long-lasting consequences on every other country in the world.

That, IMO, deserves blame, no matter if other governments are doing the same errors.

Not sure why this is greyed out. I might not agree with all of it, but you're not out of line.