>The governments of many countries had handled the pandemic not very well because they relied solely on WHO (and China). I see this accusation thrown around a

>The governments of many countries had handled the pandemic not very well because they relied solely on WHO (and China). I see this accusation thrown around a lot, but it doesn't align with timeline and import statistics. APT32 (Vietnam) hacked China as early as Jan 6th, but didn't shutdown borders until late Jan, well after WHO confirmed H2H and after China the broadcasted seriousness of covid19 with Wuhan followed by country wide lockdowns. Apart from shutting borders with Hubei/China in late Jan - early Feb, the countries that responded well shared one common quality: they immediately rolled out effective screening, testing, tracing and isolation. Which is in line with WHO recommendations on Jan 23 and Jan 30. The effectiveness of border closing is debatable, since imported cases statistics from these regions (SK, HK, Taiwan, Singapore) indicate very few cases were exported out of China (less than 30), most of which were out of Hubei, whereas hundreds of imported cases came from Americas and Europe. Australia, New Zealand and Canada is similar. These are all places with massive traffic flows with China that also repatriated hundreds to thousands from Wuhan with few positives cases that spread was or could have been managed without huge impacts on civic life. Vietnam is different in that it doesn't have as much resources as other countries so it must necessarily ere on the side of caution. But broadly, the countries that didn't handled the pandemic well didn't listen to WHO and China and waited too long before acting.