Politicians are (by and large) people who spend a lot of time talking to other politicians, who are sensitive to other people's expectations, who go with the flow and follow conventional wisdom. They don't break ranks and do anything radical or innovative alone.

The politician who does otherwise is an unsuccessful politician.

When a government makes a plan to solve some problem, it tends to be the same as his neighbour's solution.

China was the first territory to react to Covid, and it reacted brutally, with what we now call lock-downs. Total suppression of human movement and interaction and activity, covering an entire city.

This was not the only option nor the most effective one, though the people who copied this solution now claim that it was.

And that's just it, most of the world copied this approach, because politicians instinctively copy each other.

But if covid had started somewhere else, if the first government to react had been portuguese or venezualan or dutch, the template solution would certainly have been very different. It would have been a less brutal and more effective one. The world might be a very different place today.