We had the examples from China, S Korea and Singapore and counter examples from Spain and Italy. We watched what was happening in Italy with mounting horror for 3 weeks. We didn't need hindsight, we had the examples right in front of us.
"We were to slow to learn from other countries on handling MERS/SARS we didn't have enough test kits, contact tracers or PPE". That was Johnson, yesterday, admitting his failings to the Liaison Committee
That's not true. The previous pandemics of SARS, MERS etc provided precisely this prior example. There's a reason why countries in the Far East with experience of those pandemics clamped down hard and early. The lessons were there for us to learn and explicitly referenced in the govt's risk register containing the plan for dealing with a pandemic. But we failed to implement those lessons.
I do think that getting stuck in the Hamster wheel of pointing fingers at the Government will, unfortunately, end-up with people becoming entrenched - I present exhibit A) The USA, where wearing a mask seems to have become a political statement, or otherwise.
What needs to happen is some very critical analysis of what works and what doesn't.
The Asian response, and Oceanic, is very different to what the Western World went with - is it better? It looks like it has been. As you mention, they learned that the hard way and acted on it - unfortunately, here is where I do think the WHO is a blunt tool - there needs to be far better International sharing and policy making.
An interesting learning that South Korea had from their most recent SARS or MERS (can't remember which) outbreak was the impact of moving and mixing patients. China, whose numbers we can't really rely on, used field style hospitals to quarantine the sick but not hospitalised. We've seen in the Western World that fantastic hospitals get overwhelmed, other patients avoid presenting with non virus related illnesses and forgo planned treatments. There may be something to be said for treating patients of a virus, early on, in separation. Maybe you identify core hospitals who would switch to a virus treatment centre, while others take No Patients, in the meantime, adding virus capacity with field hospitals and USING them first.
Contact Tracing is something else that seems to be important in managing an outbreak of a virus. In fact, it's probably your only other option vs. letting it run it's course and going for Herd Immunity and hoping it just clears up on it's own before it gets that bad. This requires a lot of hard thought and work for Western Countries - the privacy issues are real, but we need a well defined plan to enact in the future, when this does happen again.
PPE - I think the first two limit the need for this capacity - essentially we got ourselves into a position where we needed to cover for the worst case scenario. Certainly stockpiles are an issue, Globally, as are supply chains. Time to consider whether a Govt. funded, locally sourced option is a requirement of Pandemic planning. You may pay for it for years without needing it, but by god is it important when you do need it and you find the world battling over one or two supply chains.
That's just for starters.