The official numbers from China were definitely under-reported. The numbers floating on social media is near impossible. I've said it before: the Chinese Govt kept two sets of numbers. The one they released to the world, and a real one that they used to coordinate the lockdown effort. There's no way they would have tried to fight this virus without knowing how bad it was. Some set of numbers scared them enough to cancel Chinese New Years.
Our numbers are only for those that have symptoms. The largest population of low and mild symptoms are being ignored. And even with that knowledge, and understanding the risk that those people can spread this virus further, we still don't have a Nationwide Shelter In Place order. If it wasn't for the State's response, not sure how much worse this could have gotten,
Whether defeatist attitude or simply optimism, not testing and not even trying to contain the virus at the beginning is the cause of where we are today. Letting it get over faster is the same as implementing Herd Immunity. I sincerely hope that's wasn't the thinking.
Big time. For those arguing States should have been better prepared, I'll say it again: States had surpluses ready. Those States that were hit the hardest used up those surpluses very quickly. The reason for the shortage is because they just can't get resupplied. And if the next argument is why didn't they get more in the first place, the answer is they followed the lead of the Federal Government indicating "it's not that serious". By the time it was deemed serious enough, there was nothing left to purchase. Nearly after three weeks of invoking the National Emergency Act, we still have frontline medical staff resorting to reusing, and having to be creative in making their own, PPE. While the DOD have invoked the DPA thousands of times in the past three years for their needs.