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South Korea and Taiwan already had infrastructures in place with adequate supplies to deal with a pandemic, partly because of the previous biological invasions from China, such as SARS. And they have a more compact area in which to mobilize procedures such as testing, as well as more uniform cultures which are willing to obey and cooperate with government guidelines and requests. As well as smaller populations which are not as unwieldly to monitor and thoroughly trace people to people contacts.
The U.S., supposedly, has an infrastructure and SOP in place. It heavily involves the States and local governments as being the front line with the greatest responsibility for fighting pandemics. But neither the federal nor the state and local governments had stocked or restocked the required supplies before Trump came to power, nor were consistently practicing readiness and awareness. So we had to waste time ramping up what should already been in place.
And SK and Taiwan are far more wary than Western countries of the reliability of any information that comes out of China.
China lied about the danger and extent of the covid-19 in Wuhan. And we reacted to China's initial downplay of the virus. It is estimated that China's lack of truth, time being of the essence, critically set back the rest of the world by two weeks or so in properly reacting.
The Trump administration, given the circumstances, has done a credibly, or better, job of actually doing more than our established guidelines for pandemic crises. It is actually doing much of what the states should have been doing. NY, of all places, the possible epicenter of any pandemic or terrorist attack, was woefully unprepared and hypocritically has tried to shift blame on Trump.
So, at this point, what we need is cooperation and effort across all sectors of our society--all hands on deck. Bitching and pointing fingers may be a way of winning an election, but it is a cynical disregard for the safety and well being of our people.
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