zlacker

> Their cover-up of the true scale of the problem (lab leak or not) made it hard for politicians in other countries to lock down quickly. It helped it spread intentionally to multiple countries and by then it was too late.

I disagree. The actions from a lot of countries were absolutely lacking, even when they could see how bad it was given both China's data, and Italy, Israel's initial incidents.

China locked down super hard towards late February/mid-March.

During this time there was countless reports about the "ridiculous" and "draconian" lockdowns that occurred in China. The West basically pointed fingers, laughed, and said we'd be fine. And yet they're still not.

> If they were blasting their sirens early in 2021 instead of covering it up we might have had swifter border closures etc.

I agree that even earlier warning would have been good. I just don't see it changing anything. Countries only started to take it seriously when it really started to affect them. They didn't want to risk a political/ financial hit on taking the measures that were needed, and they paid for it.

>>FindMy+(OP)
Well said. China botched it at the beginning. They could have prevented a worldwide pandemic, but they started acting to late. However, what I know now is that pretty much any western country couldn't have prevented a pandemic, if the origin of the virus would have been them.

I'm in Germany and the whole situation is a joke. Incompetence in any way possible, everywhere. Half heated "soft lockdowns" whenever things get worse, reopen everything as soon as it gets a little better, then be all surprised that incidents are on a rise again, rinse and repeat. Obviously every state does this without any coordination with neighboring ones.

And it's not surprising. Do you think any politician is even remotely qualified for the position they have? Usually you get your position as minister of health, or defense, or whatever, but because everything in Germany just goes its way and nothing is wrong, you do your four years, pass a few meaningless bills, and that's it. Now that we have a pandemic at our hands and the minister of health would have to actually do something for the first time in several decades, the whole spiel falls apart.