The situation was definitely not clear at the beginning: - there was a cluster of pneumonia cases - there was a detected case of SARS - there was a new coron

The situation was definitely not clear at the beginning: - there was a cluster of pneumonia cases - there was a detected case of SARS - there was a new coronavirus The fact that the SARS test didn't detect SARS, but actually SARS-CoV-2 wasn't clear at the beginning. Was it the same coronavirus that was detected on the 27th? Was the cluster of pneumonia cases definitely caused by that same virus or was it a coincidence? (Nowadays lots of people like to claim that Covid19 is not killing people, but rather it's the pre-existing conditions. Imagine how much push back you would've got before the pathogen was even properly recognized!) The pneumonia outbreak was conclusively linked to the Coronavirus only on January 7th. 2 days before the first death. If it took a week or two after that for mobilizing the whole region against a previously unknown pathogen, it's not so bad after all. In Europe we struggled to find face masks for MONTHS after that! :/ Also, I don't think that Taiwan ever closed their borders with China: they were simply screening incoming flights from there, and they were still allowing their citizens to come back from China (compare with Europe in December 2020, where italians cannot even go back to see family in the country, even if they are italian citizens :/ (unless they are also residents... Or someone in their family is passing away, or similar serious reasons)