My point is not to defend the Chinese government's horrible early misdeeds, but rather that the current global pandemic situation is not uniquely or even primarily China's fault. Sure, perfect handling by the Chinese government would have had a chance of containing this pandemic within their borders. And clearly the bad-faith actions of the Chinese government early on were far from that perfect handling. But even perfect handling would still have relied on luck, and success would not have been guaranteed. In any case no country should be measured against perfection. Most of the consequences over the pandemic taken as a whole are truly the result of attitudes and policy decisions from countries other than China, very much including the US.
[Edited to replace most references to "China" to "the Chinese government", to emphasize the differentiation between the government and the people. I am just as opposed to hate against the Chinese people as I am to the early pandemic handling of the Chinese government.]
this is wildly inaccurate. china single-handedly delayed world response by at least a month by jailing journalists, destroying samples, and lying to the WHO. comparing that to some degree of ineptitude in the US or anywhere else is nonsensical.