We've had to ask you this before.
In authoritative countries the messenger of bad news tends to be 'disciplined', and so bad news is not delivered. It still exists, but no one wants to be the individual that creates the (negative) feedback loop that may be contrary to the diktat that came down from on high.
Of course hiding bad news happens in less authoritative countries as well (being the "tall poppy", Law of Jante, 「出る杭は打たれる」), but the consequences may be less severe.
There was all sorts of secrecy with SARS many years ago, and it seems that China has still not completely broken that 'habit':
* https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/early-missteps-and-stat...
Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.
I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called 40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv recordings.
I have a hard time imagninig something like this happening in many Western countries. It might happen, but in my view it's far more unlikely.
I’m not dismissing the initial attempt at cover up here and the Chinese government should seriously examine their priorities. I just think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to link this event to causing a “big disaster for whole human society”.
(Disclaimer: hindsight is 20/20, of course)
It's crossing a line where one's ethnocentrism paints the other not just as "different" but fundamentally "lesser": e.g. many Europeans consider the USA to be "ethically behind" comparably rich countries for its arguable lack of reverence for human life (comparative differences like death penalty, no generalized health care, weak labor and family protection, a certain love for the harshness of capitalism, scientifically flawed sex ed, etc). From this view to qualifying the "lesser" as "evil", there is but one step that some don't hesitate to cross.
It's always been somewhat painful to me, because knowing both sides of the pond, culturally, I just know that the grass isn't that much greener on either side; it's really a matter of perpective, and Europe also has ethically grey values (think history, think apathy).
So today, whenever I hear a blanket qualification of 1.5 billion people (or their regime), especially in absolute terms like "evil", I roll my eyes first, and then I'm afraid. Dehumanizing others, believing that they're lesser than us, is but the first step down a very dark path.
Don't forget that for all our cultural differences, you might be closer genetically to a Chinese person of the other gender than you are with your own neighbor who otherwise looks and thinks just like you.
I mean, you can make the factual, scientific category; you may reason about it and build models that work to some extent; but reality is never clear cut, it's always hyper-complex in comparison of any short statement (hence why it's hard to meaningfully discuss such concepts in less than articles, ideally books). That's one my take-aways from a few years of sociology. Some things you just can't condense, even if it makes for a witty and intuitive proposition. Rigid values, as opposed to starting from relativity, really is the enemy of the thinker in a complex/chaotic environment such as those attemptedly described by the social sciences.
Just my 2cts. Claiming that "politicians are A, but the people are B!" is already a dubious proposition that lacks substance beneath its romantic appeal; but generalized to a massively distributed yet pyramidal political system of 1.5 billion people, it's sociologically nonsensical.