China's censoriousness let the virus spread easier in the early stages than it would have under a more open government
I mean, I honestly think that's debatable; the 'cover up' was down to internal politics of regional government wanting to hide what was happening from central government rather than country wide policy.
You get those exact same scenarios in 'open' government countries, and you would have the same delayed reaction of "is this a threat? If it is, how big a threat is it? What should our response be? How severe should our response be? How do we message this?" under
any government; ironically the chances of rapid response and drastic countermeasures is higher under 'closed' government than it is under 'open'.
Like, what countries could get away with the type of lockdown Wuhan had? We can't even get fucking idiots to agree to wear
a mask.
As I said, I don't think China are an exemplar on handling a pandemic, but a lot of the same US media that were running whispering campaigns about how you can't trust Huawei, and how China are secretly adding spychips to all electronics made in their factories, are the same media who are saying that basically its all chinas fault covid19 wasn't a china only problem, which I obviously can't
prove is false, but doesn't in any way seem to map to any alternate timeline I can envisage.
