Why has it taken so long for the U.S. to realize that a national Lockdown is necessary to prevent the spread of Covid-19?

Is it South Dakota is doing fine and that state never had a lock Down. What works in one State is over kill in another state. The Local authorities should make the decide what to do as our Constitution says. CPT Gurinder Rana Sir I remind you that the Tenth amendment says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." To enforce a National Plane would be involution of the 10th amendment Sir. That Sir is why we can't have a National Plan.

This post aged well, seeing as india has no idea how to contain the spread. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/asia-today-seoul-considers-curbs-virus-cases-climb-71505127

Ego and Pride are responsible for masses downplaying this Pandemic as a simple flu. The Spanish Flu affected 500 million and killed 50 million, between 1918 and 1920. This flu was caused by the H1N1 virus, which is a Type A Influenza virus. The H5N1 and the H7N9 viruses originated in China as well. Influenza is of three types. Except for the Swine Flu, which origins were found in Mexico and the U.S., the rest draw their origins back to China. Did you know this fact?

China lies.
Absolutely NOTHING that their government says can be trusted.

A good question, and there's many reasons I think.

To start, no one alive today has any living memory of the last truly global pandemic: The 1918 Spanish Flu. People tend to go with what they "know", and what we all know is that we've never seen a global pandemic before; sure, we rationally are aware they have occurred in history and can happen again, but Mr. Spock will gladly remind us that we are not a rational species, so our functional mindset says "never happened before"; all of which taps into the "it can't happen here/it doesn't happen anymore" beliefs people have, which is an emotional response, not a rational one. Toss in a little economic "loss aversion", and we really start to shy away from the potentially extreme measure that might fully and quickly address this.

Next, the scale of the problem wasn't readily apparent, and recent news reports indicate that the infection and death rates reported by China have been under-reported. You need a lot of hard facts to overcome feelings and heuristic based judgements.

If China has been successful in tamping down the Bud Light Virus (don't talk bad about Corona please), it is because they are a totalitarian governed society. The state can dictate any individual's actions, and do so with impunity. And frankly since Tiananmen square, pushback of any kind against the Communist government has been essentially non-existent outside of Hong Kong. In fact, it appears many over there, at least as shown in western press, support the heavy-handed approach. Our governmental system is not geared for totalitarian control with many kinds of checks and balances in place from a free press, to the courts, to shared powers, an armed society, etc. Add to this that culturally, we are still a fiercely independent people, many of whom have a distrust--or at least keep a careful eye on--government exercising authority; particularly at the federal level. As a people we get better buy-in from social "bottom up" approaches than from the governmental "top down" ones. So "China-style" methods which may succeed in a pandemic scenario--but stifle any number of other situations--simply aint going to work here.

India is an example where it seems they recognized a potential problem earlier than the west; South Korea too. I read speculation that India had more experience with public heath concerns than we have in the west, and that guided their actions. True? No idea. I don't know anything about the Indian public health system. I did read an article about a person from Boston who went to see relatives in India, and noted that their governmental is more restrictive and can respond in ways the US cannot/will not. Nowhere near China-level restrictive, but assuming the author is right, it's more restrictive than you find in the US as I noted above. Nonetheless, the world's largest democracy, opted to act more cautiously, and it seems to be working for now.

For me personally, I think the entire world reacted to slowly. This goes beyond the White House. I will say, I think the medical experts were and continue to do their best to understand this beast of a virus. It has been a long time since the medical field has had to deal with something along these lines. I don't truly think any of us were truly ready. However, on the flip, the US Government did not want to overreact. We all saw the push back that came when we closed trade from China. That was the first punch to our supply chains. Later, when Europe (minus the UK) was shut down, people saw it as another "racist move". I agree, that our borders should be shut. Heck, I would go as far as say shut down state borders as well. But I'm not a medical professional. I personally think at this point, we are past the line of no return. Shutting down any borders now will not contain the virus since the virus is everywhere now. We had a small window to do this and we missed it.

There is no difference between states that did and didn't use lockdowns.

Well to start with the constitution says we have the right to assemble. This takes away the governments right to tell us what to do or when to do it. Now if you want a communist government which the people don't have any rights then the it could be locked down with no repercussions but there is already law suits happening from businesses that were shut down and can not recover.

Then there is if the US does do a complete lock down for the time required to completely kill out this virus, then the economy goes under and you have nothing because the dollar will be worth nothing. Do you think locking the US down will stop the virus? I do not think so because to keep it out of the US you would have to lock down all foreign travel and imports. So locking down is not the answer.

Requiring mask is also against our constitutional rights as a free people. But The government can ask you too and any decent person with any morals will.

The answer is not easy to come up with but has to be a balance between the economy and the peoples welfare. That is what Trump was trying to do but could not get the people to understand.

Byron Skinner. A national lockdown is impossible, but extra i contacts and fee gifts are not. In China the invented the Virus and with a population of a couple of billion, he a few million in eh ground becoming fertilizer is not big deal. In the Us the reason i shorter, especial for the 10% of US enterprise she the government opens their check books they make money. Example in the second quarter or 2020 some of you got a free gift of $1,200 dollars. The GDP went up 33.1% a record.

While governmental systems are often brought into this augment, they are irrelevant. Economies and for of Government are two different institutes. Economies make revenue. Governments take revenuer

The evidence shows that the lockdown is more detrimental to public health than COVID-19. This is due to missed medical diagnoses and procedures because they were deemed non-essential by politicians and medical bureaucrats. Further, the false panic has had an adverse affect on mental health which is compounded by the severely damaged economy, resulting in severe financial difficulty for many people. Countries like Sweden that did not lockdown are fairing much better overall.