Check out the 60 Minutes video "Whistleblowers silenced by China could have stopped global coronavirus spread" [0], and then see if you still feel that way.
This isn't accurate. It wasn't "China" who silenced people, it was a local official who eventually got removed and punished. The now deceased doctor, who wanted to report it, got officially apologized.
I clearly remember back when this whole thing started and how pretty much all of the western countries bashed on china endlessly for no actually sane reason. It's what made me start digging into it. This whole mess, we live in now, wouldn't be a thing if china-bashing wasn't the norm in western countries and if they, the respective governments, instead had acted in the interest of their respective people. Which they didn't.
The world got plenty of notice and the countries listening acted successfully.
Even the US enacted travel bans which - if they had followed up and kept working towards suppression of the virus - would have been a great start. Instead the US sacrificed it's gains to political games and now is seeing what happens.
The whistleblowers in China shouldn't have been suppressed. But there was plenty of notice early enough to act.
China confirmed human-to-human transmission on Jan 20[1].
China shutdown Wuhan on 23 January[2] (notice this was after human-to-human transmission was confirmed). Wuhan airport was closed[2], and Chinese did stop all travel out of Wuhan[3]. There are many reports of people escaping the lockdown that night, but it doesn't seem this was some Chinese policy - more that events were moving fast.
It's your country's responsibility who enters its borders. The Trump administration moved fairly quickly and closed borders to Wuhan by Feb 2, which was earlier than South Korea (but later than many countries).
I don't think many would fault that part of the US response, but it isn't exactly clear what people think China was hiding in this period - remember this was the time when people were seeing pictures of the lockdown in Wuhan. Countries can make their own judgement about the severity.
> The extent to which the Chinese system causes the severity to be downplayed matters a lot.
They were welding doors shut to keep people inside. It's difficult to argue they downplayed it.
There is (fair) criticism of the regional authorities in Wuhan downplaying it in early January. But the central government didn't seem do anything to try to hide things.
BTW, if you didn't already know these dates and thought the Chinese gov was hiding things, you might want to re-examine the source of your information.
Don't buy into the western anti-china propaganda.
Here's an official timeline: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/29-06-2020-covidtimelin...
I clearly remember back when this whole thing started and how pretty much all of the western countries bashed on china endlessly for no actually sane reason. It's what made me start digging into it. This whole mess, we live in now, wouldn't be a thing if china-bashing wasn't the norm in western countries and if they, the respective governments, instead had acted in the interest of their respective people. Which they didn't.