Crunching the coronavirus curve is better than flattening it, as New Zealand is showing | Devi Sridhar

Countries that are actively working to contain coronavirus are buying themselves time to deal with its uncertain outcomes

As Sars-CoV-2 has spread across the world, some countries have reacted with alarm and thorough preparations, given their previous experiences with Mers or Sars. In these countries, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam, containment of the novel coronavirus became the imperative, regardless of cost. However, other countries chose to treat it like a bad flu strain that would be unstoppable and spread across the population until some kind of immunity was reached.

Much of the difference in countries' initial responses can be attributed to whether they "overreacted", given prior experience with two other more deadly coronaviruses, or whether they perceived the novel coronavirus from the start as just posing a moderate to low risk to their populations and eventually becoming endemic.