We shouldn't punish China for simply having the virus. That could happen to anyone. But lying about it on the world stage for months, imprisoning whistleblower doctors, etc is reprehensible behavior.
China misled WHO into thinking the virus wasn't contagious up until Jan 20. On Jan 14th, WHO (https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152) said the virus wasn't contagious on twitter.
China arrested scientist whistleblowers. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblo...
To top it all off, China attempted to blame the united states for it. https://qz.com/1817736/china-fuels-coronavirus-conspiracy-th...
The Atlantic has a thorough article as well. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trol...
As far as we know it was identified as a novel pathogen on the 26th December. Its actually hard to know where to collect the sample from, and if you don't know what you're looking for, its extremely easy to miss. You can't just put a virus under a microscope. Its not unreasonable to assume that they didn't have any confirmation for a couple of weeks that the virus they sequenced was the exact same virus for all of the other cases. You need to develop a fool-proof protocol for a diagnostic test that has minimal false-negatives. No easy task to do in 2 weeks, etc, etc...
Edit: For the downvoters, here's evidence of a TEMPORARY ban
https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-chinese-we...
Please refute me with evidence of a permanent ban. Otherwise, you're being counter productive
And before anyone accuses me of nationalism, the US has its own share of worldbuilding to answer for, and our response is also difficult to excuse as US intelligence was no doubt aware of the true danger, considering papers regarding R0 and lethality and such have been floating around since early January. Like credit, assign blame where it is due. The behavior of the CCP is not a reflection on the Chinese people.
And also they think one organization can know everything and recognize a global Pandemic just with a few cases. Oh man, if this kind of decision maker existed, We should do whatever we can to bring him/her to the coding industry. We will have bug-free softwares with his/her insight.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fl7m3z/the_fir...
Most Americans are angry at their own government's response to a catastrophe, AND angry at the CCP for creating the catastrophe. (No, not the virus. The catastrophe is the virus' spread when it was preventable.)
1.) Not fully enforcing laws regarding wildlife with wet markets, and additionally not having strict enough laws based on experiences with SARS, due to domestic pressure from a sizable group supported by wet markets.
2.) Initial suppression of communications from doctors in Wuhan trying to sound the alarm, including forcing written apologies for "spreading rumors". This suppression allowed for the disease to hit a massive spike due to not cancelling Wuhan's New Years feast.
While the citizens of China were victimized by this horrifically themselves, this doesn't change the culpability of the CCP.
Yes, other countries didn't handle it, but the root cause is the CCP's decisions, both long term and short term. India has a billion people as well, and is also densely populated. We don't see diseases coming from India on a regular basis.
Edit:
I want to add that as a human being, I've been horribly disappointed for years that we have collectively helped oppress over a billion people in China by propping up a government that doesn't respect individual rights via trade. Yes, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, but they are under the yoke of a regime that fails them. Other governments fail their citizens as well, but you don't "dissappear" if you complain about these failings publicly.
I value the wonderful contributions and accomplishments of the Chinese people. I just wish I wasn't complicit in them being under the thumb of an authoritarian government.
China should have used their resources to seal everything and everyone the minute they knew. I agree with Trump on this one, they should have stopped it there. Bats, civets were all linked to previous infections and we know bats have other viruses waiting for us
But either way, now is too late. The entire world got it and tens of millions will de directly or indirectly.
Someone even vomited on my shoe in a subway station once and then just walked away without even acknowledging that they did it. I'm really not surprised that these diseases show a tendency to start in China.
In Hong Kong and Taiwan it's rather different - hand sanitizer is readily available and people actually wash their hands after using the restroom, etc.
Even in surrounding (and much poorer) South East Asian nations people seem to be much better at maintaining a better level of general hygiene.