still cant figure out how in this day and age how they could shut the world down
Because that's the definition of a pandemic.
Bill Gates, the second richest man in the world was warning of the possibility of a pandemic happening back in 2015. That means that money and science might not be able to stop one in time. 2015 was even before the current U.S. administration.
Research is now saying that the first
reported case in Wuhan, China, might not have been the earliest time COVID-19 might have been around. Web searches in China dating back months earlier show many people doing searches on coughing and other COVID-19 symptoms. And satellite photos show cars at China hospitals, in certain areas, were way up. Back then, it was just thought to be "flu-like" symptoms. It may take a while for medical researchers to detect it.
In the NYC area, it took only 3 WEEKS!!! from the first two
known confirmed case to spread to over 20,000 known, confirmed cases. It is now estimated that COVID-19 may have been undetected in our area months before. But, those cases were isolated enough and the symptoms mild enough that we didn't turn into the COVID epicenter earlier. It took a super-spreader going to a funeral and a birthday party in the same weekend, and the majority of those people not voluntarily quarantining, which was the recommendation back then, that turned it into an out-of-control situation in a tremendously, densely populated area.
That super-spreader had actually been sick for a couple weeks. He went to the hospital twice already. Each time, they had tested him for
other viruses, as they never fathomed that COVID had hit our shore on the east coast. He, of course, tested negative for those viruses, which is why he ended up at the funeral & birthday party, thinking he didn't have anything communicable.
It wasn't until the day when a hospital worker, traveling home from working with COVID patients in Iran, and recognized she had the symptoms, and went
specifically to be COVID-19 tested, and tested positive, that NY officially knew we had COVID-19. The next day was when the super-spreader was tested and found positive for COVID-19.
Again, a novel virus may get around way before the medical experts realize they have something that could spread like a pandemic.