Well Sam is ignoring the factual basics of COVID. It had a very low IFR, comparable to seasonal flus. And yet it was treated more like Ebola in terms of the government response. It would have been fine to let young and healthy people go about their lives, visit businesses, go to schools, and all that. Instead, we subjected everyone to authoritarian measures that were not grounded in reality, and even the slightest objection was given all kinds of labels - misinformation, conspiracy theory, anti science, etc.

And let’s not forget the glaring saga of the lab leak theory, which was attacked and suppressed in news media and social media. It showed the extent of societal control that was being practiced under the guise of COVID. That violation of free speech principles is the troubling tangent, not the people who were asking for more transparency and accountability for China. In the end the CCP got away with a WHO visit only a year late, and with the only US rep having a conflict of interest since he was involved in the coronavirus work at Wuhan Institute of Virology (Peter Daszak of EcoHealth).