Jim has already hit on this, but the New York Times has a good piece on how New York fumbled its coronavirus response.

In the response to the virus around the Western world, I’ve been reminded of wars of insurgency. A near-universal feature of these wars is that the governments fighting them initially deny that there is an insurgency, and then underestimate how serious it is. Governments always want to appear in control and don’t want to admit they are involved in a costly, grinding conflict. With the virus, most governments didn’t want to contemplate extremely costly measures — the various lockdowns — until it seemed absolutely necessary, and often that was too late.

Anyway, the Times sets out the basic issue of timing:

Then, there’s this vignette: