Why England, America, and the World Slept? An Assessment of the Global Response to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-2019)

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is a virus that struck across Asia from 2002 to 2004, known currently as SARS-CoV-1 in contrast to the SARSCoV-2 that appears to be the cause of the Coronavirus (COVID-2019) pandemic that emerged in China late in 2019, then spread across much of the world from early 2020 onward, continuing to infect significant numbers of the populations of Europe, United States, parts of Latin America, but curiously no longer a threat to Asia. Even more curiously, COVID-2019 seems never to have been a threat to the Republic of China (Taiwan), for reasons to be discussed herein. Much of the rest of the world has sustained high rates of morbidity and mortality from this pandemic for reasons that can best be explained as governmental inaction. COVID-2019 is believed to have zoonotic origins, and seems to bear a close genetic similarity to bat-bourne viruses. Some analysts have hypothesised that COVID-2019 came from bats either directly or through an intermediate host such as pangolins. At this juncture much of the speculation over etiology is conjecture. More clear is the observation that national governments plus many state governments in federal structures such as the United States, missed the mark repeatedly, not so much on a political level as is fashionable to allege, but in scientific including medical communities that were and continue to be grossly unprepared for any disease of this magnitude, no matter its origin, except in Taiwan that responded brilliantly and rapidly. What course of action to pursue at this point to safeguard the global population against mutated resurgence of COVID-2019 or the emergence of its successors? Testing and vaccines are important. Vaccines are useful only to provide herd immunity from known diseases. What about the unknown?