Re: And the non-centralised approach
"And yet, countries that have implemented a variant of this (e.g. Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea) have had far less problem with COVID-19 than others."
Sorry, this is a FALSE conclusion. Singapore and Taiwan are also VERY close to China and have had a LOT of back/forth travel.
As has CALIFORNIA, which (surprise, surprise) does NOT have a very high infection or hospitalization rate, especially when compared to New York City.
And California has had a TON of travel back/forth with China. Case in point: a company I do contract work for [up until the shutdown affected their customers so much THEY had to shut down, too] had sent engineers to China to correct some quality problems, and when they got back I was in the office. One guy got sick and had to go home [fever, coughing]. I joked with him about "infecting everybody" and guess what - a week later [working from home] I had a fever, and then my (adult) kid got a fever, and then I had another fever (the reported 'relapse'?). And each time it was mild, and went away fast. Was that the Wuhan virus? Probably. At that time California was reporting an unusually bad flu season, but of course nothing its hospitals could not handle [which has been demonstrated over the last MONTH or so, "social distancing" notwithstanding, and California's governor started giving away ventilators a while ago].
But of course, politicians and advocates of CONTROLLING THE POPULATION like this will CLAIM it was "the social distancing" but if this virus HAD BEEN AROUND FOR 3 MONTHS BEFORE ANY SOCIAL DISTANCING then HOW could it be "the factor" ??? I say it was NOT. Most likely it was either a gross overestimation of the Wuhan virus' behavior, OR some level of herd immunity [being exposed to similar kinds of viruses a LOT due to travel to/from China], or perhaps both. And, MUCH lower death rates because U.S. health systems are better than China's overall...
Same for Taiwan, Singapore, and other nations in the pacific rim. I expect their health systems to be up to par with USA, UK, etc., as another factor in this.
As for Italy and NYC, there may be a commonality THERE that causes them to be affected MORE than other places. Italy certainly had the frequent travel to/from China, but not so much NYC. However, NYC has a LOT of public transportation usage, and a high density population.
I mentioned the Stanford study before. As they continue their research, we'll get to the truth on this.
In any case, check out the REAL commonalities here. With at least ONE good counter example, "draconian anti-privacy phone app tracking" isn't the factor.