| His point is that their #1 priority was keep this under wraps instead of fixing it as soon as possible, even if it meant more people had to learn about it to protect themselves and not have the virus spread. Coronavirus has disrupted many businesses in China, and I think the government knew this would happen if more people found out about it. So their priority was not getting a big economic hit, not solving the issue. This is a good post on what happened, but there are others like it if you want to dig deeper on how they tried to cover it up: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-dis... I'll just copy these 2 paragraphs here to address your "China responded quickly" comment: > To be sure, at first glance, China’s government has appeared to be more forthcoming about the latest outbreak. But, although the first case was reported on December 8, the Wuhan municipal health commission didn’t issue an official notice until several weeks later. And, since then, Wuhan officials have downplayed the seriousness of the disease and deliberately sought to suppress news coverage. That notice maintained that there was no evidence that the new illness could be transmitted among humans, and claimed that no health-care workers had been infected. The commission repeated these claims on January 5, though 59 cases had been confirmed by then. Even after the first death was reported on January 11, the commission continued to insist that there was no evidence that it could be transmitted among humans or that health-care workers had been affected. |