The time for pundits and policymakers to get serious about preventing the spread of the Wuhan Virus in America was late January. That was when it became clear that China was facing a serious new public health threat. It was also the time when the one piece of data, an exponentially growing number of infected people, was genuinely terrifying. There was so little information beyond that at the time that one could envision a worst-case scenario of a new virus as infectious as the measles and as deadly as SARS (10 percent mortality rate) or MERS (35 percent).
Read MoreCommentary: Wuhan Virus Exposes the Danger of Reliance Upon China
