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[Right. And the early Chinese response is very simply explained by incompetence and CYA. Much like our CDC, I’m afraid.]

I don’t think it’s necessarily incompetence. Look at what the Italians are having to deal with. This is after they got a whiff of what was happening in China, although they couldn’t quite be sure if it was because of political ructions, China’s backwardness in medical care or cultural issues re disease transmission. The Chinese had no one else to look to, in terms of cues.

The big problem for Xi Jinping is however he handled it, the pandemic was a tar baby. However he performed, large numbers of Chinese were going to die. Each of his rivals in the Chinese state would look at it as an opportunity to mount a leadership challenge. Then there was the possibility of popular unrest, as has occurred during multiple pandemics in the past. So he settled on a multi-track information strategy - denials, arrests, bare-faced lies, self-congratulation and deflection. On the medical front, he chose quarantines, mass cremations, hoarding of PPE’s, the construction of temporary treatment facilities, the transfer of medical personnel and equipment to hot zones and a national shutdown.

By denying foreign personnel free access to China’s labs and medical facilities, he basically gave the outside world no warning about what was to come. To preserve his position as head honcho, he risked the lives of what may turn out to be millions of pandemic victims. That is the problem, not his personal competence or otherwise.