Originally Posted by
iahphx
The same thing will happen in America if the virus hits us hard
Nope.
First, China has a strong infrastructure for political oppression which, in a bizarre twist, is perfectly suitable for tracking the infection. The Chinese government pretty much
knows which people you met in the past 14 days and can easily track and isolate them (even without you realizing that).
The West doesn't have such an infrastructure. While it is a good thing in peaceful times, it means the West has no comparable means to quickly determine the contacts of an infected person. This also makes it much more difficult to determine the original source of the infection, since there is no data to analyze.
Second, specifically the U.S. health system does not exactly encourage people to seek out a doctor due to obscene health costs. This means those with mild cases will probably not bother making a test (and paying around $1000 for it) and thus will unknowingly infect those surrounding them.
The advantage the West has is a 2 month lead time for medical research. While these 2 months were pretty much wasted by governments, the West has 2 months less to wait for any new medicines, treatments vaccines etc. that would help against the virus.