> Transparency of the situation (or allowing outside observers) would have given the rest of the world valuable weeks or months and saved untold lives. Whateve

> Transparency of the situation (or allowing outside observers) would have given the rest of the world valuable weeks or months and saved untold lives. Whatever the Chinese government might have been "saying" (in press releases?) their signals were abundantly clear to everyone paying attention, and should have been even clearer even earlier to folks with access to CIA reports etc. Feel free to criticize the Chinese government's statements per se all you like, but it is absurd for other governments who didn't take action for months despite an obvious need to blame the Chinese government for this. Especially when those governments have done plenty of their own lying (in the US case, arguably more). Frankly, I don't think more transparency from the Chinese would have made too much difference in the USA. The Trump administration would still have been calling the situation a Chinese hoax or deliberate biological warfare or whatever conspiracy theory. We can see clearly how e.g. South Korea mobilized the entire country, spun up nationwide testing at unprecedented speed, implemented a huge and very effective contact tracing program (if they had waited an extra few weeks and not caught the Shincheonji church cases in time, they might have ended up with uncontrollable spread), did detailed case studies for every case they could find and published all of the details, made sure every resident had access to masks, etc. etc. There is no inherent reason why much stronger responses couldn't have been made in the US and Europe. The US is among the best inherently prepared countries in the world for a crisis like this: little reliance on public transit, lots of jobs that can be done remotely, relatively few intergenerational households, a world-class public health agency, one of the richest healthcare systems in the world, world-class universities and research facilities, many large pharmaceutical companies, a national constitution and legal structure that gives the federal government broad powers in a health crisis, a position of international power and leadership with many strong alliances, a central position in the world economic order, a huge industrial base, ability to shift human resources from one place to another in response to local crises, a relatively self sufficient domestic economy, universal access to basic communications infrastructure, ... And yet we had among the worst responses in the world, due to abject failure of federal leadership, total lack of coordination, and rampant misinformation by GOP-aligned media and others.