[Goose]

China allowing the video of all the excavators deployed to build an emergency hospital on Jan 23, was ALL I needed to see to know this was a serious threat to the world.

Unfortunately, the heads of state in the rest of the world weren't as smart as you. That might be due to their loss function being much different than yours. If you are wrong, the worst that happens is that you maybe get teased about it. If a head of state is wrong, the consequences to him personally and his nation in general can be catastrophic. That is why most heads of state make decisions much more slowly than you do, and require much more consensus before they act. While it is true that this may cause them to act too slowly, it is almost always what will happen.

Also, unlike you, they actually have to do something. They have to convince their nation to follow them, while you can just be right all by yourself. It they recognize the problem but adopt a bad plan, they still get crushed, as does the nation. So it isn't apples to apples.

The heads of state in the rest of the world....



Ummm, you mean the heads of state in the western world.  



Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and several other Asia countries saw the January events, understood there was a major pandemic emerging, and took aggressive actions all before the first of February.

(Don't forget Hong Kong) Beg to differ. Those nations did not have to take aggressive action because they had functioning test, track, and trace operation permanently in place to update them on exactly what was going on in their country. They knew more or less exactly where they stood, so they had a much easier decision tree. This public heath capability was organic, and left over from the SARS epidemic where these nations really took a hit. The heads of state didn't have to "activate" it. They never had to go into full "mitigation", so they never had to make that decision. They had ground truth in their own countries. The western nations did not.

[Goose]

China allowing the video of all the excavators deployed to build an emergency hospital on Jan 23, was ALL I needed to see to know this was a serious threat to the world.

Unfortunately, the heads of state in the rest of the world weren't as smart as you. That might be due to their loss function being much different than yours. If you are wrong, the worst that happens is that you maybe get teased about it. If a head of state is wrong, the consequences to him personally and his nation in general can be catastrophic. That is why most heads of state make decisions much more slowly than you do, and require much more consensus before they act. While it is true that this may cause them to act too slowly, it is almost always what will happen.

Also, unlike you, they actually have to do something. They have to convince their nation to follow them, while you can just be right all by yourself. It they recognize the problem but adopt a bad plan, they still get crushed, as does the nation. So it isn't apples to apples.

The heads of state in the rest of the world....



Ummm, you mean the heads of state in the western world.  



Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and several other Asia countries saw the January events, understood there was a major pandemic emerging, and took aggressive actions all before the first of February.

(Don't forget Hong Kong) Beg to differ. Those nations did not have to take aggressive action because they had functioning test, track, and trace operation permanently in place to update them on exactly what was going on in their country. They knew more or less exactly where they stood, so they had a much easier decision tree. This public heath capability was organic, and left over from the SARS epidemic where these nations really took a hit. The heads of state didn't have to "activate" it. They never had to go into full "mitigation", so they never had to make that decision. They had ground truth in their own countries. The western nations did not.