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Let's entertain the possibility that China wasn't responsible for a lab leak, and that the zoonotic theory is true. Whatever the source, we know that the Wuhan wet market was a super-spreader event, which Chinese authorities concede. Following this, China grounded all domestic flights in January 2020, yet still allowed outbound international flights well into March 2020. Countries were left to ban flights from China on their own, which was a heavily politicized topic.

We can say that we don't have enough information to condemn them and all other countries involved in the lab leak theory, but this one mistake is solely on China's shoulders. Had they grounded all outbound international flights, countries would've had more time to prepare, yet we saw the meteoric rise in cases worldwide in February.

I have heard this version of events many times, but that's not how I remember it.

I remember the only international flights allowed as being the repatriation flights. (e.g. when an overseas government organised for some non-Chinese who were in Wuhan to be able to come home). And presumably the return flights for planes that would otherwise have been stranded in Wuhan.

FactCheck matches my memory...

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

Wikipedia for 23rd January says all outbound flights were banned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...

And anyway, there's something wrong with the whole idea: if domestic flights were banned international flights were still allowed, wouldn't the people of Wuhan who wanted to get to Beijing just fly via Bangkok or Seoul? A ban on domestic-only flights wouldn't have achieved anything.

Those articles are only referring to flights directly from Wuhan (ignoring the fact that neither Wikipedia nor the WHO are credible sources). International flights were still allowed from Beijing and other cities.

From a NYT article[1]:

> “I was surprised at how lax the whole process was,” said Andrew Wu, 31, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Beijing on March 10.

> Sabrina Fitch, 23, flew from China to Kennedy International Airport in New York on March 23.

> About 60 percent of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not American citizens, according to the most recently available government data.

So these were not only repatriation, but commercial flights.

The flight data also shows plenty of activity in February and March[2]. Whether those were only domestic flights or not is difficult to say, but clearly the shutdown wasn't total even domestically.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...

[2]: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/the-chinese-roller-coaste...

Even so, from late December to 23rd January is a long time to still allow dozens of international flights everyday from Wuhan. Incompetence is ruled out because domestic flights were suspended right away.

> yet still allowed outbound international flights well into March 2020

I keep hearing this, but I imagine if they banned outbound flights they'd be criticized to this day for trapping people in the country during the outbreak

When planes were grounded, the virus was already all over the world for months. We just didn't know it at the time.

From what I've read, it seems the virus jumped into the human population around mid-November 2019 at the latest, and possibly early in October.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/first-covid-19-case-coul...

> "Another study by Australian scientists, published on Thursday in the Scientific Reports journal, used genomic data to show SARS-CoV-2 binds to human receptors far more easily than other species, suggesting it was already adapted to humans when it first emerged."

I think the evidence is steadily getting stronger for Sars-CoV-2 being the result of the accidental infection of a lab worker with a CRISPR-modified bat betacoronavirus that was being tested in human cell lines and/or genetically modified lab animals. From there it spread globally by train and airplane.

The coverup of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is a far worse crime than if it did accidentally leak from a lab. The coverup has done serious harm to our ability to understand how these diseases emerge at large scale in human populations.

And to be clear, the coverup was at least a two-handed effort of Chinese Communist Party and Ecohealth Alliance (US-based nonprofit pandemic/virus research org that operated in Wuhan.) Ecohealth was all-in to prevent inquiry into the lab leak possiblity from the start, including ghostwriting/astroturfing an op-ed pretending there was scientific consensus against a lab leak.

I suspect it had less to do with official guilt and more to do with the fact that Xi Jinping wanted to leave absolutely no opportunity open for an opposition to his 3rd term to form.

It’s not a coincidence that China maintained draconian controls for years, but within months of him getting his 3rd term (and immediately purging all viable political opponents from the party), he completely opened China at the first sign of protests.

This is a very controversial set of claims on a very heated topic, so you should not make such bold claims without a link to further reading or some sources in your post. Otherwise you just make a lot of heat with no light.

The regime has trumpeted the superiority of their political and governing system since the second month of covid-19, in stark contrast to the decadent and degenerate west, daily news started with data of how many more thousands died in the US.

That’s a good 2 whole years on a roll, no matter how illogical it seemed, it worked.

Until spring 2022, from where it lost control.

> The regime has trumpeted the superiority of their political and governing system

for decades

> daily news started with data of how many more thousands died in the US.

using unverifiable numbers about Chinese cases, and jailing people who challenge the data.

> Until spring 2022, from where it lost control

of the media message.

> They knew that their poorly managed reckless science program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak

One funded by the EcoHealth Alliance and NIAID and whose research was known to Fauci.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-no...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...

https://nypost.com/2021/10/21/nih-admits-us-funded-gain-of-f...

I think a more likely scenario is that all countries did what they could and China succeeded better than any other major land country. But then, as victims of their success, the costs of doing less increased with each new wave and when Omicron hit Hong Kong, the death rate soared in a way it didn't in the West.

Hong Kong was not the only place to have high death rates from Omicron. New Zealand did as well. But none of the countries which had difficulty controlling earlier Covid outbreaks did.

We are often prisoners of our own successes more than we are victims of our errors.

NZ didn't have anything like the COVID death spike that Hong Kong did. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealan... https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china-hong... Adjusting for population HK has had about 50% more COVID deaths than NZ. This is probably because our vaccination rate for the elderly was much higher when the dam broke.

And, adjusting for population, the USA has had > 4x the number of COVID deaths that NZ has had. I don't think makes NZ a "victim of its own success".

I love how many of the statements made in this comment are made as statements of fact, when it is just pure fantasy.

They wanted to push their own locally developed vaccines, which didn't work as well so had no other choice. If they mass imported other vaccines it'd kill their own industries.

The west did not have 1 billion spare vaccines, they were short themselves for first 1.5 years

China's Fosun is 1 of the partners to Biontech to produce vaccines.

This scientific recklessness should be broaden out, because (to my knowledge) gain-of-function research is still happening and even laboratories with the highest security lab-leaks happen.

> I suspect China's draconian, desperate attempt to eliminate Covid entirely was largely due to official guilt.

OR it was because they didn't have a vaccinated population and they couldn't build and staff hospitals fast enough to deal with a nation wide exponentially growing infection.

Don't let facts get in the way of a good rant though.

They could have vaccinated their population while they were maintaining zero-COVID. It's a mystery to me why they didn't make vaccination mandatory.

Sinovac, Sinopharm, etc that China made weren't working up to the required standards. It wasn't something anyone wanted to come out and admit.

To make vaccination mandatory they'd have to admit, kill off their own producers and import. It'd be a political disaster.

Their vaccines weren't great but mandating them would have been a lot better than nothing.

It could actually have been a lot worse than nothing. Compare covid deaths in Japan and Korea prior to the mRNA vaccine rollout in 2021 to afterwards; afterwards the infection and death rates sky-rocketed.

That particular anti-vax theory doesn't hold water when you consider that New Zealand vaccinated almost everyone with mRNA (Pfizer) prior to COVID spreading widely, with excellent results. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1085... NZ cumulative excess mortality since January 2020 is still negative: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortali...

For the people? Not for the politicians and executives. Any stats that show the vaccines as performing worse than the competition would hurt sales.

Sinovac was something terrible like 50-62% efficacy. While also not provably stopping transmission. The spread would have continued and there was no evidence it would have reduced the burden on hospitals. It would definitely be worse for people.

The reason PRC never said it publicly is because that would have been terrible for them politically as well.

Apparently you missed the memo that the experiments were paid and directed at the request of US NIH

Oh well, the fact that e-cigarette pneumonia at the end of 2019 and the samples were not allowed to be inspected, and that those US military members who went to Wuhan to participate in an event showed symptoms, is conveniently forgotten.