Early can mean "at a low percentage" (which would be good) and not just "reached fast" (which would be very bad, unless also at low percentage). The percentage is directly depending on R0 (which apparently isn't easy to get below 1 even with China-grade measures).
The inflection point here means that the speed of the spreading of virus gets slower, so less people get infected then previous day. If this point is earlier in time, this means that the virus won't infect so many people after a time. I think the big question is the cause of the inflection point. Is it because of the nature of the virus or because of the different action like quarantine