I doubt it’ll be enough, but I think it’s still possible. Even telling people, “Hey, there’s a bad virus going around, and if you’ve been in contact with anyone who has been in Wuhan recently, try to keep to yourself” isn’t exactly strict preventative measures, but it’s still far, far better than what was happening in Wuhan (“There’s no disease! Come to this giant banquet! Go forth across the country for Chinese New Year!”). We’ve gone from the equivalent of everyone using common dishes and their own chopsticks dipped in those dishes, to everyone eating their own separate meals, and that’s not an insignificant change. (Obviously this is not a statistically exact analogy!)
At the moment I think it’s quite likely that richer countries - Taiwan, Canada, the USA, Japan - can keep a lid on this for the next month or so; but things could be tragically different in poorer countries with less developed health systems. If it does continue to spread in China over the next month, and also spreads in other countries, then yeah, I figure we’re screwed. Well, not screwed in the “We’re all going to die” sense, but screwed in the “This is going to be a very bad year” sense.
This must have been referred to somewhere above, but I’m not sure, so I’ll add it again: one hopeful possibility is that coronaviruses often don’t do well in hot climates - so perhaps Africa will be spared. From Vox:
Among the many mysteries of the new coronavirus: We don’t know how it behaves in places with hot climates, such as countries in Southern Africa.
“Coronaviruses are winter viruses,” Fauci said. “When the weather is warm and moist, these viruses don’t spread as well as when the weather is cold and dry.”
While it remains a concern that developing countries in the global south don’t have the health systems to detect the virus and do contact tracing, “The somewhat encouraging news is that the weather in some of those countries is warm and moist … [which] favors against the spread of the coronavirus since it’s fundamentally a winter disease,” Fauci said.
Um, bring on the summer? Boy, that’s a thought I’ve never had in this country before.