I asked them all a simple question: How did you get the coronavirus so right so early, when so many other leaders missed the boat?

Here’s what we can all learn from their success.

They heeded clear warnings.

You can’t respond to a crisis if you don’t recognize the crisis. This sounds obvious, but it was an unusual superpower for the leaders who moved quickly: They kept their eyes open. They were lucky enough to get an early peek at the disaster, and they were wise enough to take the warning seriously.

Sometimes the signs were unmissable — Microsoft had insight into the virus because of its extensive operations in China, Smith told me.

But other indicators were murkier. For Newsom, the first hint of trouble was repatriation — in January, the federal government began bringing back Americans from affected areas of China, many to military bases in California. Newsom told me that working on the issue got him and the state’s other top officials thinking seriously about what was to come. The repatriations, Newsom said, “underscored a sense of curiosity and significance that this crisis is about to hit our state.”

They trusted the experts.

Again, obvious, and again, so rare: These leaders understood the limits of their own knowledge, and when faced with tough choices, they deferred to the experts.

“I didn’t do very well in school in science,” DeWine told me. But after a long career in politics — DeWine has served in the U.S. House and Senate, and was elected to the governor’s office in 2018 — he’d learned to recognize the value of expertise.

“When I’ve made decisions that I’ve regretted,” DeWine said, it was often because “I didn’t have enough facts, I didn’t ask enough questions, I didn’t ask the right people.”