Thank you for a detailed reply, I appreciate you taking the time to explain yourself. It definitely makes a better discussion, than dismissing the various links I've provided as biased.
Just to make it clear, in my opinion, the Chinese scientific community did all it could in dealing with the virus (and still is). Just like doctors in the rest of the world, some of them make mistakes.
The issue is not with these types of actions. It is with the authorities silencing those professionals who raised the alarm as early as mid-November.
I haven't seen any western government threaten doctors not to publish their opinions. So, in that sense, the Chinese bare a lot of responsibility, beyond any mistake made by any professional or official.
I could be wrong, but to me, of all mistakes done since day one, the one silencing Chinese doctors has the biggest effect on the entire world. I
f we (the world) had another month or two to prepare for the pandemic, surely many lives would have been saved.
Since Wikipedia
is a reliable source for you, please just take a quick look at these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Wen_(doctor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xie_Linka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang#Whistleblower_in_2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_in_mainland_China#Censorship,_propaganda,_and_police_responses
For the first statement, perhaps they're not threatened with a complete media blackout (then again, neither was the Chinese doctor). But as I've tried to say previously, multiple doctors have been fired and then struck off in the UK after whistleblowing about unsafe patient practices or staffing etc in the NHS. Doctors with previous exemplary records end up suddenly with a whole host of complaints out of nowhere. Suddenly nobody wants to hire them in the country. These stories are barely shared in the media.
I think there's also a habit of some people to caricature what China and the Communist party actually is. Are they a repressive one state country? Yes of course. Does everything come from the central party? Of course not, anyone who thinks a country of 1.5 billion can be controlled in that way is not living in reality. The provinces actually have quite a bit of leeway and even within them, there are governmental structures filtering all the way down to local level. Some people seem to think that this doctor raised the alarm and Xi himself shut him up.
One of the problems with dictatorships is that you don't want to go to your superior with bad news. Hence the Wuhan local government initially attempting to shut him up and then rightly getting reprimanded for their actions afterwards.
Is it how I'd want to live my life? Not personally. But it isn't quite the caricature many seem to think.
As for the second statement, the world had a long time to prepare and did almost nothing. We all heard about it by early January at the latest. We had our first cases by late Jan at the latest. Yet did nothing. An extra month would have just mean we'd have spent an extra month watching Asia suffer thinking it could never affect us here.
I think there is also an element of outcome bias. We know its now a pandemic and therefore we analyse all previous actions within that particular lens. Historical events are often seen in this way. So silly of Pompey to do X, Mark Anthony to do Y, Napoleon to do Z. Of course that would be the outcome. But at the time, that isn't obvious.
In most countries, if a few doctors thought they noticed a cluster of cases of a disease, they'd probably be told to get on and get some more evidence. Or I guess they'd probably involve the local public health team to investigate. What they probably wouldn't do immediately is declare a national emergency and close all borders.
I think that must be borne in mind. Even while we (rightly) criticise China's HR record, government and initial inadequate response.