It plateaued in China following an incredibly massive quarantine effort. The infection is hitting countries with not nearly the social control measures that China has.

You might be surprised. There are some old laws and powers that are going to be dusted off, and in some other cases it may be the case that governments just claim powers on an emergency basis and essentially nobody other than the absolute political fringes of society is going to complain.

Much of the world isn't actually under control of a government. Here in the developed world, we've basically bought into the nation-state system, with a strong central government controlling a defined territory with border checkpoints. But many parts of central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and rural areas in other continents aren't like this. The dominant social organization is by tribe, clan, cartel, gang, or warlord; borders are porous or nonexistent; and the government has no authority, not even a monopoly on physical force.

The virus doesn't care whether you believe in governments, and it's just now hitting these regions - Pakistan, Africa, North Korea, etc.

"essentially nobody other than the absolute political fringes of society is going to complain"

I very much dont think that is the way this plays out in the western world.

In China, they welded the doors shut on entire residential buildings leaving the people in there to either die or survive on their own. They bagged and gagged people with elevated temperature and force quarantined them. They had crematoriums working over time.

China has complete military control of their population, this is going to go very differently in the West.

China's process was very effective and probably greatly reduced the rate of infection but there is no way people in other countries are just going to sit silently while the same actions are carried out.

Source for these claims?

China's numbers are absolutely not reliable, because:

- they've changed their reporting standards multiple times

- they don't seem to be testing enough people because of test kit shortages, because many people seem to have given up going to hospitals when they're sick because they know they won't get in or because they're barricaded in to their homes or forbidden from leaving

- their media censorship makes it difficult to independently verify the numbers they are reporting

It also plateaued in China IF you happen to believe the numbers they are reporting are genuine, which I would wager they are not.

This is complete wishful thinking. It is nowhere near contained