If the West is going to eschew the Chinese route, then they need to embrace the Korean route: agressive testing and contact tracing, mandatory quarantines for suspected contacts, bans on public gatherings, massive PSA campaigns about hand washing and wearing face masks, providing a hotline people with symptoms can call so they don't walk into an ER and accidentally shut down their neighborhood hospital for two weeks.

So far the West is striking out on most of these measures, either for lack of political will or for technical incompetence.