The virus spread _before_ the quarantine became serious enough. People just didn't take the quarantine seriously.

I live in Czech Republic, and I read in the news that some 16.5k Czechs went on vacation to Northern Italy _after_ knowing about the risks. Now we're all in quarantine, with plenty of restrictions. Numbers of infections are still very low, but so is the number of tests that were done.

People just did not take Covid-19 seriously.

In Italy the national lockdown was announced on March 9th, so 16 days ago. Today Italy reported 5210 new infections. So the government measures might have some effect, but nothing like in China.

I don't live in Italy so for me it's hard to judge, but could the difference in efficacy maybe be explained by the discipline of the people?

It takes like two weeks between measures being taken and them having an effect on the number of confirmed infections.

Can you tell that to my governor? 'cause every couple days she's throwing more things in, based on how "ineffective" the previous orders were. It's like, I get it, we need to contain the spread. But stop saying that you're doing this new thing because the rates are still climbing so obviously this thing you did two days ago didn't work. Maybe it didn't, but two days is not enough time to know.

Maybe she already knows that but needs to justify the harsh measures to her voters and uses the salami tactic intentionally.

One difference is the timing. Lockdown in Spain and Italy happened too late. Also is it still spreading or are the new cases the result of the incubation period for the disease?