They were correct in threatening a doctor who reported what he saw (facts) to retract his statements as being _false_?
The local government didn't want to believe in the threat and wanted very much to keep any negative news hushed out of fear of looking bad to the central government.
So there you have it, a country governed by fear where people prefer to hide issues instead of quickly seeking help.
They could have done it through internal channels, without the public knowing but no, they crushed the messengers and tried to hide the facts until it was too late.
The central government admitted it itself: https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1506445-20200203.h...
That's for sure but there's a useful middle ground between mindless panic and total complacency, and these Chinese officials were way too far on the complacency side for quite some time.
They wouldn't threaten and silence numerous doctors that tried to warn everyone.
They wouldn't blockade access to one of the world's largest cities, to prevent outside health inspectors from assessing what was really going on. It wasn't until the first week of February that they were willing to let a major contingent of outside experts in, including from the US. That was two months into the outbreak and a point where things had already gotten very bad.
If this had started in France and the US asked to send experts in to help, France would not deny that request, they wouldn't blockade Paris off from all foreign access to hide what was really happening (how bad it was, and what they were doing to people).
And the tech press mocked "no handshakes" until less than a month ago.
Stupid knows no political party.
Sure our president is really downplaying it, but how do you even fight something that makes some people sick, and not others. There could be 1000s of carriers of COVID-19 who don't even know it.
It's a spectrum of stupid. Moscow Mitch is holding up financial relief because it's a good opportunity to stick it to Planned Parenthood.
"Nationalism is an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity,[2] and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty)."