It's identical to the Western response to the Iranian government murdering many thousands of their people (who were protesting) prior to the pandemic. Versus the response to the Khashoggi murder by the Saudis. Both reprehensible regimes, the media treated one death as being particularly special. Going by the massive coverage of Khashoggi, you'd get the impression thousands of murders is less important than one, and you'd be right re the Western media's obvious bias (they dislike Saudi Arabia more than Iran, and Khashoggi was one of their own).