I would differ on the usual “Big Pharm” corporate greed angle.
Based on the multiple attack vectors we have seen since November 2019, it was more likely part of the Leftist Putsch - shaping the battlefield in preparation for the insurrection to go live as of last month.
Youtube: 6m46s: 1 May: CGTN: Richard Horton: We should work together with China fighting COVID-19
Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the prominent British medical journal The Lancet in an interview with CCTV on Friday, noting that the world should work together with Chinese authorities to understand the virus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCnSEzRedGo
2 May: Steerpike: from Spectator UK: Lancet editor’s Chinese propaganda
Ever since the coronavirus first began to spread in the UK, one of the government’s staunchest critics has been the editor-in-chief of the Lancet, Richard Horton. In late March, he suggested that Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson were playing ‘roulette with the public’ and said on Question Time that the government’s response to the virus was a ‘national scandal’...
But Mr S has spotted that Horton seems to be far more forgiving when it comes to other countries’ response to the virus. Yesterday, the Lancet chief appeared on the Chinese news show Xinwen Lianbo. The programme is produced by the state-owned broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV)...
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/05/lancet-editors-chinese-propaganda/
15 May: WaPo: Lancet editorial blasts Trump’s ‘inconsistent and incoherent’ coronavirus response
by Derek Hawkins & John Wagner
One of the world’s oldest and best-known medical journals Friday slammed President Trump’s “inconsistent and incoherent national response” to the novel coronavirus pandemic and accused the administration of relegating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a “nominal” role.
The unsigned editorial from the Lancet concluded that Trump should be replaced.
“Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” said the journal, which was founded in Britain in 1823...
Medical journals sometimes run signed editorials that take political stances, but rarely do publications with the Lancet’s influence use the full weight of their editorial boards to call for a president to be voted out of office...
Lancet editor(-in-chief) Richard Horton has decried the British government’s response to the pandemic in editorials and public statements published under his name...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/15/lancet-editorial-trump-administration-coronavirus-response/