Medical experts say that strategies adopted so far by China, Singapore and Hong Kong — such as early intervention, painstaking tracking, enforced quarantines and meticulous social distancing — offer a better model for keeping the epidemic at bay.

Donald G. McNeil Jr., our infectious diseases reporter, echoed that conclusion in a conversion about the American response with our colleague Melina Delkic. Here are some excerpts.

You’ve said this is a crisis but it’s not unstoppable. How do we stop it?

It’s basically urgent that America imitates what China did. China had a massive outbreak in Wuhan, spreading all over the country, and they’ve almost stopped it. We can shut off the roads, flights, buses and trains. I don’t think we’ll ever succeed at doing exactly what China did. It’s going to cause massive social disruption because Americans don’t like being told what to do.

In places like China, Singapore and Taiwan, they’ve gone through SARS — they know how scary it is. They develop that sense of: we’re all in this together and it’s my duty to protect my family. It’s not just about whether or not I have a good time. It’s about whether or not I come home and infect my grandmother and it kills her.

Is that what some countries are missing? This sense of collective action and selflessness?

That is absolutely what many Americans are missing — that it’s not about you right now. When I was a kid, my parents were in the World War II generation and there was more of a sense of, hey, we did something amazing; we ramped up this gigantic society effort. It was this sense of we’re all in this together.

We’ve got to realize that we’re all in this together and save each other’s lives. That has not penetrated yet, and it needs to penetrate because we all have to cooperate.