>If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a different international community than I do.

I don't think you've been following much of the recent news about brexit or the trade wars with China. Of course countries can condemn and criticise others for their actions. Nearly the entire western press corps have been non-stop criticising your sitting president for the past 4 years. So I think we live in the same world. Why can't the press at the very least be honest and consistent about China?

>And blaming China, which was giving correct information about the virus by January, for so many states refusing to take serious measures EVEN TODAY would be a total farce.

https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en

Jan 14th - as reported by China. They repeatedly lied (demonstrably) about their death figures and the nature of the disease. Evidence emerged that actually China NEVER reported the pandemic nature of the disease but rather it was (still rather complicit) WHO staff on the ground who reported it.

They also permitted international flights but not domestic ones once that virus was known about, hoarded PPE and spread a conspiracy theory about the US having originated the virus.

I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification.

>China did try to cover up the virus in December of last year, and should be condemned for it. But they then showed the world how to deal with it and shared all of the relevant information as early as February. The failed responses by all European states and the US, most/all Latin American states, most Middle Eastern states etc. can in no way be blamed on China.

The contention that delayed lockdowns (delayed due to China lying up until January and continuously lying about their death figures) would have saved all these lives is honestly laughable. The trade off between lockdowns and the economy is very difficult as is contact tracing in a non-totalitarian state.

>If you want to see what a non-story this virus could have been if there were political will to do the right thing, you need only look at Vietnam. They are a 100M-people state taht have 4 times fewer cases in total by today than 10M people Sweden gets each and every day.

Apples and oranges. Centres of European trade who have considerably wider travel arriving at them and no culture of e.g. mask-wearing and governments ill-adopted to authoritarian measures vs. a communist country with considerably less is not the same at all. And we mustn't forget the impact of climate (hotter climate = considerably less impact).

China had a warning in 2003 to shut down their wet markets and arrogantly ignored it. They reopened the wet markets shortly after covid-19 broke out and covered up the outbreak. This is not even getting into the quite plausible walked-out-of-the-lab theories and it's still clear they're responsible for the pandemic.

The CCP are a dreadful totalitarian government who should be held to account. Instead they sabre-rattle, lie, spread misinformation and attack any country that dares question their narrative threatening economic consequences (see e.g. Australia).

Chinese people are the biggest victims of them. Many more millions will die before that awful group get overthrown. But their time will come.