Taiwan and South Korea never instituted a lockdown. They instituted mask-wearing and aggressive contact tracing and did so early-on.
It could also be true that not acting early only leads to economic devasatation if the govermment's response to a high death toll is to institute lockdowns. In Sweden, the government did not respond to the high per capita death rate with a lockdown. In the EU and the US, most states did.
>Put it this way: it took weeks to get a single check out to Americans in need and they haven't seen anything since. Are these not things that could be improved?
So more personal savings is the kind of preparation that you're referring to, that would have lessened the damage? Well it's a well known fact in Economics that a social safety net reduces the personal savings rate.
One reason China has a personal savings rate of 40% is that it has very little in the way of a state-administered social safety net.
So to encourage people to better prepare with respect to personal savings, the West should have reduced its social welfare spending, instead of massively increasing it over the last 50 years.
> What kind of social preparations would have prevented the economic cataatrophe that occurred?
I never said anything would be prevented, but there's plenty lacking that could have helped. The people that are struggling right now were struggling before, this has just exasperated it immensely. Put it this way: it took weeks to get a single check out to Americans in need and they haven't seen anything since. Are these not things that could be improved?