Very much agreed. One of the smartest people I know, a Frenchman called Phillippe Lemoine, published 50k words in Quillette [1] on China's role in the COVID pandemic, comprehensively addressing the cover-up charges, accusations of data fudging, etc, countering the NYT/Wapo narrative, but to this day, people are still talking about "Chinese cover-up" as if it's an uncontroversial fact, not even bothering to answer any of his arguments. Many people are even still repeating the "China closed Wuhan but sent citizens everywhere" accusation that has already been debunked and retracted by its original promulgator [2,3], and even people who know it's debunked don't bother to correct it when others bring it up. When I originally came to the US, I was attracted by its high-minded ideals, but the behavior of the press and most politicians (and, I have to say, most of the tweeting public) changed my perception forever.

━━

[1] https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-serie...

[2] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

[3] https://danielabell.com/?s=Ferguson&submit=Search