[Genuine Realist]

And it's not like the virus was only going to come from China.

The WaPo article referenced in another thread, about what happened during the lost 70 days of the administration's response, says that a travel ban for travel from other hot spots like Italy was recommended to the White House, but Mnuchin persuaded Trump not to do it because of the economic impact. So the travel ban from Europe was late--another example of economics trumping public health in the short term. 

(and BTW, as the article mentions, Trump then botched the Oval Office announcement. He said ALL travel from Europe would be banned, when he should have said all travel from Europe by non-Americans. This led to instant panic among Americans in Europe who had stayed up to watch the announcement, including my daughter. Massive booking Europe-wide of expensive next-day flights home.)

On China, their refusal to share samples of the virus is just . . . well, I don't have the words. Especially since our delay in ramping up testing had such far-reaching impact on our response.

China's delay in sharing virus samples was a bad thing, but that WaPo article and others have pointed out that the failure to develop tests was due to 1) screw ups by CDC, 2) failure to engage private companies and universities early on, and 3) rejection of the WHO test (not the physical tests themselves but the methodology) or others developed in other countries who were all a month ahead of us.

So I doubt that a couple of weeks of earlier sequence data or samples from China would've helped much given that the relevant agencies were either ***** things up or outright being told to do nothing (like when Azar told FDA to back off on testing because Azar wanted HHS to be in control).

When an actual history of these events is written,  some decades from now, the $64.00 question about the inadequate CDC response will be the extent to which it reflected an institutional and regulatory culture that had grown up over decades. The WaPo article and others don't address that. Certainly it doesn't cite any recent regulations. My intuition is that it was decades in the making. I am told that the WHO always volunteers test kits, or protocols, and the US always declines, believing - nearly always correctly - that our own home developed stuff is better. The red tape that inhibits use of private institutions has a Democratic feel, not Republican. I don't think the Administration acted in the area. If it did, the tendency would be to deregulate.

Criticisms of a hesitancy to ban travel run into a problem with hypocrisy, since the Democratic PArty and the MSM was highly critical of what bans WERE put in place. 

In fine, politicizing this phenomenon, playing a blame game (other than with the CCP) seems to me to be beside the point, maddeningly irrelevant - as meaningless as investigating why Hickam Field wasn't better defended on December 6th. What we had was a peacetime army unfit for war, and that's about all there is to say to that. Stuff happens. I intended to vote for a moderate Democrat (Biden) and will regardless. However, if this crisis is handled well from this point on, and that helps Trump to a second term, so be it. My sense is that for many in the Democratic Party and the media, the evils are reversed. They would far rather undercut every effort, cast doubt on official good faith, see the virus run wild, than have Trump win a second term.

Which seems to me contemptible.

[Genuine Realist]

And it's not like the virus was only going to come from China.

The WaPo article referenced in another thread, about what happened during the lost 70 days of the administration's response, says that a travel ban for travel from other hot spots like Italy was recommended to the White House, but Mnuchin persuaded Trump not to do it because of the economic impact. So the travel ban from Europe was late--another example of economics trumping public health in the short term. 

(and BTW, as the article mentions, Trump then botched the Oval Office announcement. He said ALL travel from Europe would be banned, when he should have said all travel from Europe by non-Americans. This led to instant panic among Americans in Europe who had stayed up to watch the announcement, including my daughter. Massive booking Europe-wide of expensive next-day flights home.)

On China, their refusal to share samples of the virus is just . . . well, I don't have the words. Especially since our delay in ramping up testing had such far-reaching impact on our response.

China's delay in sharing virus samples was a bad thing, but that WaPo article and others have pointed out that the failure to develop tests was due to 1) screw ups by CDC, 2) failure to engage private companies and universities early on, and 3) rejection of the WHO test (not the physical tests themselves but the methodology) or others developed in other countries who were all a month ahead of us.

So I doubt that a couple of weeks of earlier sequence data or samples from China would've helped much given that the relevant agencies were either ***** things up or outright being told to do nothing (like when Azar told FDA to back off on testing because Azar wanted HHS to be in control).

When an actual history of these events is written,  some decades from now, the $64.00 question about the inadequate CDC response will be the extent to which it reflected an institutional and regulatory culture that had grown up over decades. The WaPo article and others don't address that. Certainly it doesn't cite any recent regulations. My intuition is that it was decades in the making. I am told that the WHO always volunteers test kits, or protocols, and the US always declines, believing - nearly always correctly - that our own home developed stuff is better. The red tape that inhibits use of private institutions has a Democratic feel, not Republican. I don't think the Administration acted in the area. If it did, the tendency would be to deregulate.

Criticisms of a hesitancy to ban travel run into a problem with hypocrisy, since the Democratic PArty and the MSM was highly critical of what bans WERE put in place. 

In fine, politicizing this phenomenon, playing a blame game (other than with the CCP) seems to me to be beside the point, maddeningly irrelevant - as meaningless as investigating why Hickam Field wasn't better defended on December 6th. What we had was a peacetime army unfit for war, and that's about all there is to say to that. Stuff happens. I intended to vote for a moderate Democrat (Biden) and will regardless. However, if this crisis is handled well from this point on, and that helps Trump to a second term, so be it. My sense is that for many in the Democratic Party and the media, the evils are reversed. They would far rather undercut every effort, cast doubt on official good faith, see the virus run wild, than have Trump win a second term.

Which seems to me contemptible.