It's been a while, so I don't remember the exact timeframe. But basically the local officials dithered and then covered-up for a few weeks. Roughly Dec 20 - Jan 10. Though the first week of uncertainty might well be excusable. Sometime circa Jan 10 or so, the central gov't finally got solid unfiltered scientific info. And took a week or ten days to decide how to react. Lockdowns ordered Jan 22. Mistakes and delays were plentiful.
But the notion of a disregard for people in other countries is just nonsense you conjured up out of nothing. Of course, discussing anything with RSW is a waste of time, and I shall disengage. RSW gets the last word. Time to WIN! with some snarky unsupported comment.
Otherwise I always thought it was silly to refer to the virus as CV-19, when it was only discovered at the tail end of 2019, but it's impact and spread was in 2020.