[Goose]

  Once upon a time, we had a President who knew where the buck stopped.

BC

Yes, and that President virtually destroyed the Navy and got us into the Korean war, for which we were totally unprepared. I point this out not to single out Truman as a bad president, but rather to show that Presidents with the best of intentions often have bad outcomes in many areas. In some areas he arguably took the wrong advice.

We didn't need the cooperation of China to know in early January that this was potentially serious. Our intelligence agencies and military was on top of the threat by January. We had senators selling their stocks in late January. And yet our federal response was pretty much nil until mid March.

Even if China was completely open and forthright in late December, we still wouldn't have responded like South Korea did, even though we each had first cases the same day in January. Part of that is likely cultural/societal, but a big part is our government was not prepared and our leadership did not recognize the threat. Where does the buck stop for that?

The buck stops with us, the people. I don't doubt that many bad decisions were made at the Federal level. I also don't doubt that many decisions were hashed over to death and made very slowly. However, the real problem was that our nation was not prepared to deal with this epidemic. If you don't have the tools, your options are limited and many possible good decisions are off the table. This was not a secret. This was true in 1980 as well as it is true today.
Nobody really knew what was going to happen. It is a lot easier to respond to a threat if you have practiced the drill and know what your resources can and can't do. Leadership is always going to be slow to recognize a situation they have never encountered before. This is especially true when we have recently has some "false alarms" about virus dangers. Why didn't the leaders of Europe recognize it any faster? Korea and Taiwan were blessed by having a built-in public heath response left over from previous outbreaks that had affected their nations to a significant degree. The could deploy that without shutting down their countries. If that failed, then plan B. We didn't have that option.

[Goose]

  Once upon a time, we had a President who knew where the buck stopped.

BC

Yes, and that President virtually destroyed the Navy and got us into the Korean war, for which we were totally unprepared. I point this out not to single out Truman as a bad president, but rather to show that Presidents with the best of intentions often have bad outcomes in many areas. In some areas he arguably took the wrong advice.

We didn't need the cooperation of China to know in early January that this was potentially serious. Our intelligence agencies and military was on top of the threat by January. We had senators selling their stocks in late January. And yet our federal response was pretty much nil until mid March.

Even if China was completely open and forthright in late December, we still wouldn't have responded like South Korea did, even though we each had first cases the same day in January. Part of that is likely cultural/societal, but a big part is our government was not prepared and our leadership did not recognize the threat. Where does the buck stop for that?

The buck stops with us, the people. I don't doubt that many bad decisions were made at the Federal level. I also don't doubt that many decisions were hashed over to death and made very slowly. However, the real problem was that our nation was not prepared to deal with this epidemic. If you don't have the tools, your options are limited and many possible good decisions are off the table. This was not a secret. This was true in 1980 as well as it is true today.
Nobody really knew what was going to happen. It is a lot easier to respond to a threat if you have practiced the drill and know what your resources can and can't do. Leadership is always going to be slow to recognize a situation they have never encountered before. This is especially true when we have recently has some "false alarms" about virus dangers. Why didn't the leaders of Europe recognize it any faster? Korea and Taiwan were blessed by having a built-in public heath response left over from previous outbreaks that had affected their nations to a significant degree. The could deploy that without shutting down their countries. If that failed, then plan B. We didn't have that option.