The answer is supposed to be no, but the reality looks like yes. On March 10, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan and officially declared that the COVID-19 outbreak had been “basically curbed.” He said China had succeeded in stabilizing the situation and “turning the tide,” and stated, “Now what you must do is fortify your faith. We will definitely win this battle.”

The following day, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that “nobody ever thought (it) would be a problem.” He even stated on March 15 that COVID-19 is “something that we have tremendous control of.” Now more than 140,000 people have been infected in the United States and 2,400 have died. Here is my take on what went wrong.

1. Here they go again! The news of the lockdown of Wuhan on Jan. 23 did not come as a surprise. As someone who experienced the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak in Beijing, I knew that something like this would happen again in China. Western medical experts and intelligence services predicted it as well. The Trump administration must have been aware of that.