We can't simply "stamp out" Covid-19, not even the swedes. Not even temporarily, they never had less than 150 cases per day since summer.
Source: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
They went so far as to force doctors to recant their statements that it was human-human transmissible. For example, the hero doctor Li, who eventually died of the disease.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/chinese-doctor...
Before 30th Dec nobody knew this was a new disease, they were still trying to identify it. By Jan 10th the WHO was warning people of person-person transmission. Western leaders ignored the warnings.
On 14 Jan, WHO was still saying it was not person-person transmissible.
https://mobile.twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
Chinese authorities knew about the disease at least by 6 Dec.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
And were punishing doctors for talking about it on 3 Jan, probably later, too.
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/the-2019-coronavi...
That is a responsible scientific response.
Your link says "By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection"
4 days after the first cases were identified.
Clearly there would be unidentified cases before that. Hindsight is very powerful.
I'm currently in the UAE and it's a similarly interesting story. The UAE is divided into 7 Emirates, with Abu Dhabi as the wealthiest, Dubai as the next wealthiest but heavily in debt, and the northern Emirates under the financial leash of Abu Dhabi. The difference between Dubai and the other Emirates is night and day - Abu Dhabi dictated very harsh terms (by fines, and even prison time for those voluntarily spreading the disease by licking groceries, etc) and rigorous testing, and the 5 northern Emirates followed suit. Dubai was hurting (because it's a tourism economy), and opened up much sooner, leading to a very heavy spike in cases - most of the current cases in the UAE are in Dubai, which like Europe could not afford to stay closed. Even now, travel between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is only allowed under exceptional circumstances.
What? Was this kind of behaviour common?
Thailand and Malaysia are interesting, though.
I'm not sure how Singapore kept up with trade, but they benefited form Malaysia being competent. I know that the "quarantine" the UK laughably imposes on people from France is pretty much irrelevant, with the number of people exempt longer than the number of people it actually applies to.
Non native english speaker here - am I misinterpreting "stamp out"?