The bottom line is it would be difficult if not impossible to implement the things they do in China right now. Imagine this: A farmer from rural Missouri goes to his local town to buy supplies. As he tries to enter a store, there's a guy in protective gear, insisting to take his temperature. Yeah, that's going to go real well. And should a minor miracle ensue and the farmer agrees to have his temperature taken, heaven forbid he has a fever, and they try to send him to a 'fever clinic' to be tested. And if, by some damned miracle, you get him to go to the fever clinic, and he tests positive, what do you think are the chances he'll go AND STAY in a 'quarantine hotel' until he's well?
What I just chronicled is what they do in China. The measures were easy to implement there because 1. They went through this before with SARS, and 2. They're used to being treated this way. Americans? Not so much. There are Americans throwing hissy fits every ten years, because they think the government is snooping on them via the Census. A guy in Virginia drove his car into a crowd, killing a woman, because the government was taking a statue down. There are Americans who are ready and willing to literally go to war with their state government, because of laws requiring their children to be vaccinated. How do you think rural America would react to being sent to quarantine hotels? Moreover, the aluminum foil beanie conspiracy theorists would have a field day, claiming all sorts of things. You think it's chaotic in the US now, let's just see what a mandated lockdown would look like.
There was a reason President Obama provided a seat at the National Security Council table for infectious disease control, and there's a reason that up until very recently, the CDC and NIH had international operations all over the world. American leaders with an ounce of foresight realize the problem isn't a pandemic as much as it's trying to deal with that pandemic in a society that insists on freedom at all costs. So the trick up to now has been to try to prevent the outbreak from reaching you. Unfortunately, that ship has already sailed.
I'm in Europe right now, and I'm lucky, because my job allows a modicum of 'freedom.' I dare say most Americans wouldn't think of this as freedom at all. And everywhere I go, I find myself constantly thinking, "There's no goddamned way Americans would go for this."
I have news for you: Americans are gonna have to. America's on a trajectory for untold thousands if not millions of people getting this virus.The US government botched this from the outset, they continue to botch it and the cost for all that botching is going to be steep.