Czechoslovakia at one time used to encourage smoking. Their logic was that lung cancer normally arrives later in life, striking pensioners who had left the workforce, not the young, healthy, and productive. Old people dying of cancer saved the economy money. "Smoke up!" they argued.
I've never understood the people who argue that COVID was a Chinese bio weapon. If it was, it wasn't a very good one. Had the U.S. decided to let it run its natural course, the same thing here would've happened. Countless elderly retirees and social security recipients would've died, leaving the country in the hands of a younger, healthier, and financially productive population. We would've saved countless billions in healthcare and retiree benefit costs and this money could've been spent elsewhere, strengthening the country. How would this have benefited China?
Only, being a compassionate lot, we instead throttled the economy and shut everything down, determined that we would spare nothing to extend the lives of every octogenarian, if even just a little bit. But this was our doing, not China's.
But things weren’t allowed to run their course.
The CCP likely knew that.
CCO doesn’t what to conquer\occupy us in the old fashioned way of armies\fleets\air force. Just move us under them where they have a “hegemonic” control through intermediaries. Historically that’s the Chinese way, the Middle Kingdom doesn’t like to be all that intimate with barbarians. (Unless you’re Bang Bang or whatever her name was!)
They need to sell us crap & steal our IP !