Sure, the provincial government screwed up pretty badly, but when the central government locked everything down their response was unprecedented and remarkably thorough. It's important to separate the two different responses. And it's the second, central government response that seems to have suppressed the outbreak.
You wonder though how we're supposed to trust anything that's reported by the CCP when they're engaging in propaganda blaming the US and Italy for the virus. As well as when there's a documented history of shooting the messenger, human rights violations, free speech violations, etc.
Maybe they are effective - it remains to be seen in an internationally vetted way. And they also had an opportunity to disseminate globally that they had doctors reporting issues, but instead they maintained until at least the middle of January (this started in November) that human-to-human transmission wasn't documented.
Nothing they say inspires confidence given their history and current actions, especially when it's ostensibly at odds with the experiences of almost the entire rest of the world with higher living standards and more uniformly modern systems.
Increasingly as time goes on, I have a harder time believing this is anything other than another shooting the messenger, Chernobyl-style event from an oppressive, information-deprived regime.
