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I have to laugh at this. China leaked a virus that killed millions of people and majorly disrupted every economy on the planet. They continuously lied about it and covered it up to the point where the intention can reasonably be called into question.
Their punishment? Nothing.
They seem to be punishing themselves rather effectively. Kind of incredible, really, that they're still toiling away at zero covid.
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Only because US is equally culpable. The virus that leaked was paid for by the US NIH.
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Are they covering things up anymore than the corresponding American institutions?
Besides, the virus didn't disrupt much. 75yo people with 2+ co-morbidities aren't responsible for a lot of critical infrastructure. Western governments got themselves into lockdowns on their own will and continue to fervently defend this decision.
At this point it looks like China is on the way to be the most-harmed country by corona related events as everyone else totally forgot about it but they are stuck in their hypochondria.
The virus may not have disrupted much on it's own, but Fauci and friends disrupted a lot.
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Yeah, but they released it in China. That's a lot easier to swallow as an excusable "oops" than blowing things up in Europe.
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When I get out my extra shiny foil hat (shiny side out of course) I start to wonder whether the US developed it, to reduce the world's pension overhang (the virus seems to target pension aged people a little too well), in China planning for its eventual leak to cast blame on a rival with a reputation for poor controls.
A virus that predominantly kills people who are five pension cheques from the grave hardly seems worth the effort to me.
Those last six months cause most of healthcare spending. By making people die of pneumonia earlier..
Still, nah. It was just incompetence and hubris.
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Doesn't almost every disease do this?
Yes, but most diseases aren't as contagious to infect a meaningful fraction of the world's population within a year of release.
I believe a meaningful fraction of the world population catches different competing strains of flu every year.
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Err, yes, but...
In the context of COVID, we naturally compare it with the 1918 Spanish Flu. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
and also
When COVID started, there was much to fear. It might be a repeat of 1918 and clobber young adults, disrupting everything. But it rather quickly became clear that COVID was not that kind of pandemic.
Notice how poorly counting deaths works. Death for death, the Spanish flu cost at least ten times as many Quality Adjusted LIfe Years. Sticking with death counts, rather than estimating life years lost, exaggerated the severity of COVID by a factor of ten or more.
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