You wake up and It's January 2020

Johnson and Trump absolutely caused the deaths of people with their ignorance and ambivalence as to the severity of the crisis and their role in setting examples even if not outright legislating in a particular direction. So too did other leaders, but what are we doing here if we don't call out completely incompetent behavior when it is plain to see?

In terms of your scenario, I'm presuming we'd be acting with the knowledge that we now have? In this case, I think an immediate halt to all international travel unless negative test requirements and strict quarantining practices can be implemented would be the foremost thing to advise. That an shutdown of all public events for an initial 3 week period to allow time to determine if it was in individual countries would be necessary. I would also advise countries to develop scalable testing facilities to have them ready to implement.

I would advise them to fire Phil Hogan.

I would have purchased PPE and brought in mask wearing much sooner. Protected nursing homes. Also travel bans in early days would give a chance to prepare before the surge.

but no not much else. Everyone was learning as they went along and it may be similar next time as the next virus could be very different.

I’ve a little boy with an intellectual disability who cannot wear a mask. Should people like him face the Spanish Inquisition every time they step out the door? No. I’d prefer a kinder society where people get the benefit of the doubt tbh.

edit he looks like a typical boy which can be tricky to handle because people don’t realise

True but many aren’t.

I'd be asking for a credible account of how this novel virus emerged, so it never happens again.

My earlier post on here advocated immediate travel shutdown, rapid testing and short term lockdowns until the lay of the land could be determined, so we are largely on the same page.

But, we saw massive push back against any advocacy of travel bans, lock downs, mask mandates etc. If you had done as you suggested here, I would hope that the impact of Covid in terms of infections, deaths and extended restrictions would have been lessened.

But, human nature being what it is, we'd probably have seen a massive negative reaction to even the short term restrictions and calls that it was vastly excessive and expensive. And as a consequence, you'd probably have been very nervous about calling for any sort of an election.

Given the projections that were being made in Ireland in March of 2020 about the potential infections and deaths, it could be argued that the government of the time did very well with what they had to keep overall deaths down and they did much of what we both are in agreement with (but maybe not as fast as they should have) and we've seen no shortage of detractors for how they performed.

take over Madagascar,