Everyone will try to postpone drastic actions until they run out of other options. Nobody wants to risk their arse calling Wolf. Either way they will be roasted by media. For wasting money or lives.
Agreed. This is a very tough kind of decision to make. And we have no sure way of predicting for sure how a given virus will act and spread until it has already done so significantly - by definition, acting early would be acting on non-significant data, which no one would really agree with. It's easy to agree with early actions when it's way past early. It's not when we have little inconclusive data.
Sure some countries have waited for too long even when we started to have significant data, but it's obvious we're always going to lag by a few weeks with viruses like this. Otherwise we would end up taking drastic measures every time people start sneezing in the streets.
Always easy to say what should have been done, rarely easy to say what should *be* done.
You know, in general I would tend to agree but in this case...
Didn't our politician see what had happened in China? Even with all the mistrust for a totalitarian regime with a Great Firewall designed to prevent the spread of 'undesired' ideas, the data on the industrial production was there for all to see. But after that, didn't they see what happened to Italy?
And after that, didn't the see what happened to Spain?
And after that...
It is true that this is a very serious problem with no painless solution, but the math is pretty clear and is known to experts in math and epidemiology. To avoid a catastrophic spread of a highly contagious virus with no vaccine in sight you need to act fast on social distancing. Se for example the latest videos by Tom Rocks Maths on YT, it explains it very well.
Instead, every Country is looking at the demise of their neighbors, possibly trying to take advantage of their economic downfall, instead of deploying measures to prevent this mutual exploitation. Hollywood will make "The Big short 2", and everybody will wonder why it was allowed to happen - again.
(all of this in addition to the loss of jobs and company foreclosure due to the lockdown).