Well, we now have the benefit of hindsight, but in many countries it was hard to argue for hard lockdowns at that initial time
South Korea didn't have major lockdowns. Lockdowns are one possible option, they aren't the only thing you can do. The failure in other countries was that they didn't do ANY of them.
But before that there were attempts at coverup and downplaying, even in Wuhan (remember the ophtalmologist who was admonished by police for making comments about new SARS-like outbreak?).
Which I'm sure you remember happened AFTER they reported the existence of coronavirus to the WHO, right? That part of the narrative always seems to get missed out. Like I said, this is China we're talking about. They're going to cover **** up. The issue is did that cover-up mean that the rest of the world couldn't make an informed decision about the virus. And I'm going to say no.
We're talking about China. You should suspect a cover-up unless you are a complete idiot. What we're arguing here is whether the world would have reacted any differently if they had the true picture or whether they are trying to point at China in order to shift the blame for their own incompetence.
If there was no cover-up it's simple. If China gave a true picture of the outbreak then pretty much most of the West was massively incompetent.
If there was a cover-up then the question becomes what would the real situation have needed to be like so that the rest of the world would have changed their response. And I honestly don't believe the Western world would have done anything different unless China had reported casualties in the hundreds of thousands, not just thousands like they did. Why? Cause even if there was a cover-up what they did tell us was ****ing terrifying. China shut down an entire city because they claimed 500 people had a virus. They shut down the entire country during the largest festival of the year for 2000 cases.
In China.
In a country that still has outbreaks of bubonic plague, this was considered THAT serious.
If other governments didn't sit up, take notice and say "We need to make sure this thing doesn't spread in our country cause China seem to be ****-scared of it!" then they are incompetent. If they didn't say "You know something, China does have a track record of covering-up stuff. Maybe we should prepare for the worst just in case" they are gullible idiots. People always seem to ignore that point and argue that somehow the leaders of their country were unprepared for China to lie to them. I can't express how stupid that argument truly is.
