[Goose]

The evidence was there in China.  It took the unfortunate cluster of deaths in the retirement center in Washington State to make people realize that it can happen here.  Maybe there are those that think actors & athletes are our models for rational behavior, but I'd like to think that is just media machines at work.

The evidence was there that it could happen in China. SARS also happened in China. SARS didn't happen here, although we were repeatedly warned that it could/would. One can certainly argue that we did not have anywhere near adequate surveillance in the US to know what was going on with COVID-19. However, most people aren't going to take it on faith that it will happen here until it has at least once in recent memory, and that includes persons in authority. There are epidemics that happen elsewhere in the world all the time. They didn't impact us here. This one did. It is probably true that our lack of detailed knowledge about how this virus behaves made it difficult for the CDC, or really anybody, to say in January that it was extremely probable we would be heavily impacted unless we started SIP immediately. If we had a decent contact tracing and testing system in place in all the states, maybe we could have contained it. We didn't, and so we couldn't even attempt containment. Do we now realize we need such a thing? Let's hope so.

[Goose]

The evidence was there in China.  It took the unfortunate cluster of deaths in the retirement center in Washington State to make people realize that it can happen here.  Maybe there are those that think actors & athletes are our models for rational behavior, but I'd like to think that is just media machines at work.

The evidence was there that it could happen in China. SARS also happened in China. SARS didn't happen here, although we were repeatedly warned that it could/would. One can certainly argue that we did not have anywhere near adequate surveillance in the US to know what was going on with COVID-19. However, most people aren't going to take it on faith that it will happen here until it has at least once in recent memory, and that includes persons in authority. There are epidemics that happen elsewhere in the world all the time. They didn't impact us here. This one did. It is probably true that our lack of detailed knowledge about how this virus behaves made it difficult for the CDC, or really anybody, to say in January that it was extremely probable we would be heavily impacted unless we started SIP immediately. If we had a decent contact tracing and testing system in place in all the states, maybe we could have contained it. We didn't, and so we couldn't even attempt containment. Do we now realize we need such a thing? Let's hope so.