BTW. I don't believe that story - Kissinger was a lot of things but he and Nixon were not in the 50 Hitlers league.
Something else: should we be more scared of countries with a confirmed history of genocide and using weapons of mass destruction against cities, or China.
To be fair, China is also doing their own genocide against the Uyghurs.
An American is on a steamship with a Chinese steward. The news reports the Japanese had lost 25 soldiers that day and the Chinese 250. The next day it's worse, the Japanese lost 35 men and the Chinese 500. On the third day, the numbers are 50 Japanese and 2000 Chinese troops. All the while, the Chinese steward simply smiles. Finally, the American asks him how he can be so happy, given the news. The Chinese gentleman simply says "Pretty soon, no more Japanese".
That is just how it is done in that corner of the world. Fight for your Motherland until the last man standing, and individual lives have no value. USSR lost 30M in WWII so that remaining 170M saw the Victory Day. Stalingrad was basically a meat grinder.
Smaller Eastern European countries had even more appalling losses, not because of their disregard for human life, but because of their enemies' appetite for murder.
Stalingrad was a worthwhile strategic objective, if I'm not mistaken. Keeping the Wehrmacht engaged also gave the Soviets an opportunity to stage the massive pincer that broke the Wehrmacht's back and damn near knocked its allies out of the war
There is a great book by Kissinger about China that explains a way of thinking Chinese rulers have. That was stroked me most was a chapter about early conflict between US and China (in Mao times). US were trying to frighten Chinese rulers with nuclear weapon, but Chinese answer was that even if US strike them that way and kill 300 million people, there is still 700 millions alive.
If you look on Covid from that perspective, the mess in some lab in Wuhan sounds very plausible. For Europe/US it is a big problem, for China it is a big opportunity.
In Europe/US there is a lot of regulation concerning research (ethical, security) that just don't exist in China. We don't know what they do in terms of genetic modifications, cloning, bacteriology, etc. The fun fact is that western companies are eagerly investing in such research in China as they are cheaper and they don't need to care about boring stuff like ethics.
We should be scared.