Thanks for the links. I seem to recall hearing that there is speculation that the first cases in China occurred MUCH earlier than they admit--like November, possibly earlier. Assuming that is true, with direct flights from Wuhan to the US and the rest of the world, there was NOTHING that could have been done to prevent the virus from hitting our shores. I know several people who are sure that they had it as early as January. Don't know if that's true, but it is certainly plausible.
The best info I have is that doctors in Wuhan - a city of >11 million - had enough similar cases to recognize
something was happening some time around
December 7th or 10th. Around
December 25th Wuhan doctors had seen enough evidence of family member or coworkers or patient-doctor transmissions that they were warning each other to take precautions. Around
December 31st and in the first several days of January, multiple labs in Wuhan had sequenced the virus' DNA.
Compare those chronological milestones to what China told the world - by leaks or through official channels:
On
December 31st word was
leaked to the West that an outbreak was happening in Wuhan.
~3 1/2 weeks delay from when it was recognized in Wuhan!
On
January 11th, the DNA sequence of the virus was
leaked to the West and confirmed by China.
Nearly 2 weeks delay from when it was first sequenced.
After denying it almost daily from December 31st onward, on
January 20th China and their running-dog mouthpiece WHO admitted that human to human transmission was happening.
Nearly 4 weeks delay from when Wuhan doctors started warning each other to take precautions.
China did not restrict
domestic travel out of Hubei Province until
January 23rd! And were still encouraging China-flag carriers to continue flying internationally in
early February!
The infections I've seen that dated to late November were not confirmed to be what is now called Covid-19 until samples from the patients that had not been discarded were tested in January or February. So the virus was in circulation in November but not yet recognized.
So, given the lag between whenever the virus started circulating in November and when Wuhan doctors recognized there was an outbreak, the virus almost certainly was circulating in much of China and had been carried out of China by mid December. So even if China had notified the world promptly - as they were supposed to do as members of WHO - the outbreak could not have been contained to Hubei Province.
But the spread outside of China might have been considerably less.
The 2 week delay in communicating the DNA sequence was a 2 week delay in other countries being able to develop diagnostic tests and start vaccine development.
The 4 week delay in communicating that human-human transmission was happening was a four week delay in other countries knowing to take appropriate precautions.
All in all, whether Hillary or Trump or Biden were President on December 31, 2019, Covid-19 would have come to the US, full force. I seriously doubt that Hillary or Biden would have taken it as seriously as Trump did. And neither Hillary nor Biden would have had the respectful relationship with pharmaceuticals companies, related businesses, and the military to accomplish anywhere close to what Trump has.
Why anyone with two or more functioning brain cells would think Covid could be kept out of the US when Flu Season has been an annual constant since at least 1918 is something I cannot understand.