A lot of diseases originate in Asia for various biological, cultural, and geographic reasons, not always political ones. Swine flu originated in the US and infected over a billion around the world, and the world didn't have "instant and severe" sanctions against the US.
Swine flu didn't kill 1.5M. Swine flu wasn't covered up at source with doctors arrested and sanctioned. Swine flu didn't come after a very similar outbreak in 2003 where worldwide experts told america 'this particular kind of market is a huge pandemic risk, you should stop that' which america adhered to for a brief period then reopened and promoted. America didn't stop flights internally after the outbreak while permitting international ones. There wasn't indication of the WHO being overtly influenced by the US to cover up the seriousness of swine flu.
America acted to address the issue and prevent future outbreaks. China is doing precisely the opposite, and looking to save face rather than save lives.
Anybody with half a brain should be aghast at what's going on very blatantly right in front of their eyes. The next pandemic might not have a 0.4% case mortality rate mostly affecting those at the end of their lives/with comorbidities.
Taking the point separately about disease prevalence in Asia - absolutely, and there are many reasons as to why - the wide biosphere, the broad consumption of many species not consumed abroad, the prevalence of high risk animals with similar biology to ours but higher tolerance for e.g. fever/respiratory disease (bats are unfortunately extremely good at this) - this is precisely why we have to be extremely vigilent there.
This is also what makes the Chinese refusing to allow serious investigation into the outbreak (now only permitted via the highly questionable WHO) along with them opening wet markets shortly after the initial outbreak and worse of all the undenaible cover up particularly egregious.
Perhaps the next pandemic would be unavoidable even with China doing all they could to prevent it - but for them to play dice with the future of civilisation with what control they have is unforgiveable.
This is not exactly the same, but police searched the home of a Florida data scientist and confiscated her computers, because she kept reporting Florida coronavirus statistics, when the state government would have preferred to keep true numbers secret.
The Chinese government is clearly not great, but I see blaming them for covid as a scapegoat for the massively bungled response in the US. If China did a good job instead, it's still be unlikely to have contained the outbreak entirely within it's borders. It's still each countries own responsibility to protect it's people, and the US had no one to blame there except itself. Sure, China deserves some blame, but I think saying that it's the "real" story is dangerously understating the massive, ridiculous, incompetence of the US response.
