[dTal]

For months, almost the entire Western world just watched slackjawed while Covid spread outward from China - presumably hoping it would just go away.

I wouldn't worry too much about hamstringing containment efforts.

[jacobr1]

Wasn't that because the virus has hit some kind of local maxima of morbidity and human-fear?

If it was some kind "new ebola," I could imagine a much more aggressive response, with much less political polarization.

[ricardobayes]

Can't blame them (us) too much. It was unprecedented, and all previous dangerous fledgling pandemics in the past 10 years did just stop in time somehow. H1N1, MERS, SARS, Ebola etc.