Thing is, no society was prepared. You may name Singapore and Japan but after initial success, cases are now spiking there. You may name South Korea and that wi

Thing is, no society was prepared. You may name Singapore and Japan but after initial success, cases are now spiking there. You may name South Korea and that will be fair, but their success is a continuation of their failures (effectively they are have a techonology-driven totalitarianism, most Westerners would hate to live there, and this results in more pressing problems than there are in any Western country). Even if Russia that declared itself safe (for ridiculous explanations) initially, now has world's 3rd number of new cases daily and appears to be on track to become one of the worst hit countries - it wasn't preparedness, but rather a delay because of deep poverty and low mobility of post population there - so epidemic took a lot of time to get there. No one was prepared. This is a black swan event, they happen once in a century. If you try to get prepared to every kind of them you'll spend more than if you just absorb the consequences. Trick isn't preparedness, but rather resilience, ability to get up and move on quickly.