[Goose]

The US was very active in quarantining the passengers on the Grand Princess.  It even took over a hotel in San Carlos as well as government facilities. 

Yes it was. And the ship was unable to dock for several days while that effort was arranged. Try that with the flood of returning passengers at the many points of entry into the US.

It made minimal attempt to quarantine people coming in by air.  If it had made a coordinated effort it could have bought more time.

If it had made a successful effort, it would have bought more time. However, the required quarantine would have been massive and in many places. I submit that without prior planning, getting such an effort together would take several weeks and best and even then had a high probability of failure.

But then the big issue, the US has not been effective in using the last 10 months to scale up testing and quarantine activities to an effective level.

Totally agree. Even worse, neither the various governmental organizations involved nor the media has really questioned this failure. I find that situation very difficult to explain.

By getting on top of the problem early (in January), Taiwan was able to reopen schools in February before the US even considered closing its schools.  For a country that supposedly has good intelligence capabilities with competitors/enemies, the US really squandered the headstart it could have taken because of its great relationship with one of its greatest allies, Taiwan.

We could not do what Taiwan did  because we had no plan in place to do it. Our problem was much larger (52 points of entry plus seaports) so we couldn't reasonably ad lib it. This all presupposes that we had the political will to act. It is a bit like saying the US knew that we were going to end up fighting Japan in WWII. We had the intelligence that was so. However, few believed it was going to happen, and little was done.

In the interest of accuracy, it has to be stated that even Taiwan did not have a full quarantine capability in mid-January when they first started screening passengers at the airport. They did pay special attention to people arriving from China and did request people quarantine, but it was a while (3 weeks I think) before they were actually enforcing it. Given the propensity of their returning nationals to comply that probably was not such a problem. They did have a plan to do such an action but did not immediately deploy it. There was some discussion inside the government.

"If it had made a coordinated effort.  .  " But the whole point is how difficult in this pluralistic, federated society to coordinate anything. Quarantining one cruise ship is one thing and has happened in the past with other diseases. A regimen for an entire nation ? Not so easy.



Many of you have forgotten too how nonchalant most of the world (not just the US) was about COVID-19 until late February. A a practical matter, there was maybe a fortnight to get a regulatory scheme together. Ain't gonna happen.

No matter how our society was organized it would have been very difficult to set up such a large effort without a prior plan. I am not even including lawsuits and the like. I totally agree there wasn't time to create and execute such a plan, and in late January (when Taiwan started to act), there certainly wasn't the will.

[Goose]

The US was very active in quarantining the passengers on the Grand Princess.  It even took over a hotel in San Carlos as well as government facilities. 

Yes it was. And the ship was unable to dock for several days while that effort was arranged. Try that with the flood of returning passengers at the many points of entry into the US.

It made minimal attempt to quarantine people coming in by air.  If it had made a coordinated effort it could have bought more time.

If it had made a successful effort, it would have bought more time. However, the required quarantine would have been massive and in many places. I submit that without prior planning, getting such an effort together would take several weeks and best and even then had a high probability of failure.

But then the big issue, the US has not been effective in using the last 10 months to scale up testing and quarantine activities to an effective level.

Totally agree. Even worse, neither the various governmental organizations involved nor the media has really questioned this failure. I find that situation very difficult to explain.

By getting on top of the problem early (in January), Taiwan was able to reopen schools in February before the US even considered closing its schools.  For a country that supposedly has good intelligence capabilities with competitors/enemies, the US really squandered the headstart it could have taken because of its great relationship with one of its greatest allies, Taiwan.

We could not do what Taiwan did  because we had no plan in place to do it. Our problem was much larger (52 points of entry plus seaports) so we couldn't reasonably ad lib it. This all presupposes that we had the political will to act. It is a bit like saying the US knew that we were going to end up fighting Japan in WWII. We had the intelligence that was so. However, few believed it was going to happen, and little was done.

In the interest of accuracy, it has to be stated that even Taiwan did not have a full quarantine capability in mid-January when they first started screening passengers at the airport. They did pay special attention to people arriving from China and did request people quarantine, but it was a while (3 weeks I think) before they were actually enforcing it. Given the propensity of their returning nationals to comply that probably was not such a problem. They did have a plan to do such an action but did not immediately deploy it. There was some discussion inside the government.

"If it had made a coordinated effort.  .  " But the whole point is how difficult in this pluralistic, federated society to coordinate anything. Quarantining one cruise ship is one thing and has happened in the past with other diseases. A regimen for an entire nation ? Not so easy.



Many of you have forgotten too how nonchalant most of the world (not just the US) was about COVID-19 until late February. A a practical matter, there was maybe a fortnight to get a regulatory scheme together. Ain't gonna happen.

No matter how our society was organized it would have been very difficult to set up such a large effort without a prior plan. I am not even including lawsuits and the like. I totally agree there wasn't time to create and execute such a plan, and in late January (when Taiwan started to act), there certainly wasn't the will.