Perhaps it's not clear, but i live in China and experience the result of these "politicos being who they are" first hand. This virus could and should have been stopped before it got out of Hubei. The CPC have no excuse for their ineptitude when they already went through a comparable outbreak in 2003 with SARS.
We have evidence that acting earlier was an option, because the party chief of Qianjiang (a city in Hubei) unilaterally decided to do just that. He went against the prevailing wisdom from Beijing and quarantined all coronavirus patients in that city back on January 17 - ten days after Xi Jinping claims he was on top of things and over a week before the party ordered other cities in Hubei (including the epicenter of Wuhan) to lockdown. Qianjiang is now the only city in Hubei that has lifted their lockdown, and infections have been an order of magnitude less than other cities in the province.
And that's only one case that Caixin was allowed to report on. If we had a free press here maybe we'd hear more about the abject failure of party leadership to follow the advice of specialists, but unfortunately we do not.
However, that is beside the point. The point is, this outbreak was grossly mismanaged by the CPC, and now the entire world is suffering. No matter how many lavish gifts wealthy party members bestow upon the rest of the world, it's important that we do not forget how this crisis started and who was responsible for it. Otherwise, how will we learn to avoid the next one?
