China publicly announced the outbreak on 30 December 2019, just a few days after detecting the first patients, before they even knew for certain what it was cau

China publicly announced the outbreak on 30 December 2019, just a few days after detecting the first patients, before they even knew for certain what it was caused by. The Chinese government gave the the US government a detailed briefing on the outbreak and what it knew about the new virus on 3 January 2020, less than a week after discovering the first patients. China publicly announced that a novel coronavirus was responsible for the outbreak just days later. Despite these very early warnings, the US government took almost no measures for more than two months. Even after China locked down 60 million people in Hubei province in late January 2020, the US did nothing of significance to control the virus. The US waited until it had a full-blown, massive outbreak in New York City to react. What could China have possibly done to convince the US government to take the virus more seriously? Seeing China implement massive lockdowns wasn't even enough to spur the US into action.