While the World Health Organisation is yet to declare a coronavirus pandemic, nobody is rushing to criticise the Australian government for jumping the gun by initiating its emergency response plan.
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It is, as the old adage says, a case of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
Human-to-human coronavirus transmission is on the loose on a number of continents. There are significant outbreaks in Italy, Iran, South Korea and China.
Australia is not alone in moving swiftly to prevent, or at worst, to slow down, human-to-human transmission within its borders.
Saudi Arabia has suspended arrivals by foreign pilgrims and tourists from some two dozen countries where the coronavirus has spread at a time when millions of Muslims traditionally make pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina.
In Japan the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, ordered the entire school system to shut down from March 2 until the end of the month.
Grant Wilson, the Asia Pacific head of Exante Data, a risk management company, warned if the virus is not contained by May "the underlying empirical premises upon which risk management systems have been designed and deployed over the past 30 years will necessarily fail".
He has questioned the veracity of figures coming out of China, saying the reported decline in new cases "tests the limits of credulity".
"There is a near unanimity of opinion COVID-19 is in the early stages of a pandemic, and even the unprecedented worldwide public health interventions will be stymied by the atypical transmissibility characteristics of the virus".
This conclusion is broadly in line with statements by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organisation, who said on Thursday it would be a "fatal mistake" for any country to assume it would not be hit by the new coronavirus: "No country should assume it won't get cases, that would be a fatal mistake, quite literally."
There have only been 24 confirmed coronavirus cases in this country.
But enough with the doom and gloom; it is just as important right now to focus on the fact the measures Australia has taken have done an effective job at keeping the virus contained.
There have only been 24 confirmed cases in this country; nine from the Diamond Princess and 15 who arrived by air. All have either recovered, or are in the process of making a full recovery, thanks to early identification and prompt medical treatment.
There is, as Mr Morrison noted on Thursday, no cause for panic or to avoid public gatherings: "You can still go to the football or the cricket, play with your friends down the street, you can go to a concert, and you can go out for a Chinese meal."
The Prime Minister's management of this crisis is almost the polar opposite of the initial casual indifference with which he reacted to the bushfire emergency in December and January. He has no plans to go on holidays, or leave the country, anytime soon. It is obvious some very hard lessons were learnt and are not going to be forgotten in a hurry.
One question many people would like to see the government answer is why, given its willingness to seek and then act upon the best expert and scientific advice on the coronavirus, it won't do the same when it comes to energy policy and climate change?
Such intransigence seems counterintuitive given that, unlike COVID-19, climate change is not going to pass on in the next few weeks or months. It is an existential threat which, if left unaddressed, will change the face of the planet and our way of life forever.
