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Originally Posted by Jacksig

It may be true that this virus was an act of God (yet to be proven) but the Chinese Gov't. failed to listen to their own Dr's and allowed 3 million people to travel all over the world during the Chinese New Year (including 450,000 to the US) without a warning.

I don't know how quickly information got from Wuhan to whomever makes the decisions. What has been reported is that a few people were seriously ill in Wuhan with something that a small group of doctors thought was new and contagious. They didn't know what it was, but clearly they were right. How long did China delay?

There are no dates earlier than Dec 30 that I can find for a definitive diagnosis of a SARS like virus. This is HERE in a Wikipedia page on the doctor who sent reports out when he saw the lab report and was reprimanded by the government, and later died of COVID. Dr Li issued his warning not to the government but to other doctors to wear PPE as he was aware of 7 cases.

Dr Li, an ophthalmologist, posted his story on Weibo from a hospital bed a month after sending out his initial warning.
He had noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like Sars - the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003.
On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing to avoid infection.

On Jan 5, less than one week later, the WHO released its initial statement on the still un-identified virus.

Does that sound like a major delay? How long did it take our government to react to HIV/AIDS? To blame the Chinese for not shutting everything down because of a few deaths in a single city is a wonderful example of 20/20 hindsight. How long did it take the US to shut down anything, already knowing what was coming, that it was deadly and untreatable? How hard did people here in The Villages fight against closing swimming pools and pickleball courts, because everything seemed fine.

Some has posted here as evidence of the Great Chinese Conspiracy that they didn't ask for us to send our CDC to help. I don't recall our country asking for outside help with our health care problems. China, believe it or not, actually has a lot of bright scientists and doctors and their own CDC which managed to produce test kits that actually worked unlike ours.

We know what COVID is whereas China did not at the end of Dec and early Jan. Even knowing how easily it spreads and how deadly it can be, and with 100's and 1000's of known cases, what is our leadership most worried about now? Why the need to open up our economy. This was best expressed by a few people who are shall I gently say, to the right of the midline...
Dr Oz, regular contributor on one highly watched network, who opined that a 2 to 3 % death rate was preferable to keeping schools closed. And the Lt. Gov of Texas who said grandparents are willing to die if that is what is needed to save the economy, and then doubled down on that message more this week on Fox:

“There are more important things than living, and that’s saving this country for my children and grandchildren and saving this country for all of us,” he said Monday.
“I don’t want to die," he added. “Nobody wants to die, but man we gotta take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.”
The Texas official stood by his March remarks and said the country “should not have been locked down.”

So if I'm understanding the anti-China argument...because they were worried about their economy they failed to lock down after a few cases and before they'd identified an organism BUT per the GOP person who is a apparently thoughtful enough to be a regular FOX guest, Texas should not have been locked down because the economy is more important than lives, especially old people.

My neck is sore from the whiplash.

What should China have done sooner? I doubt our country would have responded any more quickly had it begun here.