Rationalize all you want.
A week is damn fast for an evac flight to happen. The state dept has a lot of shortcomings, but in this instance, to criticize the speed of evacuation is just plain nitpicking.
Evacuation is not an easy process. You don’t just fly a plane into a closed airport on a moment’s notice and expect ATC support and a ground crew who have been quarantined to magically un-quarantine and magically be there to refuel and process passengers who just magically appear. All of it has to be coordinated. By human beings. Same as any other nation, we had to find our people, notice them, and coordinate responses to requests for assistance - including arranging ground transport to the airport. That was 2,000 telephone conversations minimum just to our people. A few thousand more to other nations and China to coordinate. 8 nations wanted to fly in at the same time. We got the number one slot. That wasn’t magic either. But it took a whole lot of manhours.
The fact remains, our first hint there was a problem in China was Jan 3 with the first release of the sequencing. Even so, we didn’t know the numbers because we had no significant data on the ‘novel’ virus until a week ago. The flight is boarded and in the air today, Jan 28. That in itself is amazing. Be happy.
You make a good point
Those people better go into quarantine