I wonder if there isn’t a certain element of hindsight bias here. Now it’s clear that more action should’ve been taken earlier. But knowing the panic this has caused, not to mention the economic, global logistics and travel impacts I don’t know if it was such an obvious situation at the time. Especially when the vitality, severity and mechanism of transmission etc weren’t clear. CCP policy and behavioral patterns aside, I can see the local official in charge wanting to avoid being the guy that caused a bunch of public panic over nothing.
Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.
I can understand also the need to prevent public panic. But I can not understand the motivation of organizing big public activities when knowing a dangerous virus is in the ran. I am referring to the so called "40k family banquet" （https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kft21UdBFI）. Permit me copy my other comment here to explain what it is:
I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called 40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv recordings.
Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.