Tests weren't widely available a year ago. 3-6 months ago maybe.
In fact a year ago, exactly, the existence of COVID was still being denied or downplayed by the Chinese government. Very few people in the US even knew about it, and only if very plugged in to Chinese social media or non government sources.
I'm pretty sure it was being widely covered (and acknowledged by the chinese) in late January during Chinese New Year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/world/asia/coronavirus-ch...
At the time the US evacuated ~200 people from Wuhan, flew them to LAX (well, landed at a nearby air force base), made them stay in isolation, then monitored them as they returned home for 2 weeks.
I think the times reported (in a serious article) that China reported the first death on or around that date (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu...). I certainly recall seeing coverage of it before that although it was very muted.
"There is no evidence that the new virus is readily spread by humans, which would make it particularly dangerous, and it has not been tied to any deaths"
Clearly, between Jan 8 and late Jan, was the time of massive increased interest, so we're not really in disagreement.
It was on my radar in mid January; I know this clearly because it made me choose not to buy plane tickets for a big family celebration scheduled for the end of February.
Well I'm talking about the 12th, China was rounding up and arresting doctors talking about it and making them sign apology statements. You might be thinking of a week or two later.
The USA was doing 500k tests/day back in May, and over 1m tests/day by July. Probably couldn't have happened earlier than that, but it would definitely have been feasible mid last year.
In order for a policy like this to be workable, you need tests to be widely available in the countries people are travelling from because the whole point is to test people before departure - and they simply weren't in most non-US countries.
Per capita it's really most of western Europe and the US that are struggling, and the US is doing better on vaccinations so far while it has had a higher case and death rate than most but not all of Europe. It's rather misleading to just cite a total confirmed case count.
There are only a handful of countries not western Europe or the US where I would trust their numbers. Of the list Vietnam is the only surprise.
Trust means their official numbers within a reasonable margin of error of correct. Nobody have perfectly accurate numbers, but the ones are trust are generally not miscounting by enough to worry about.
