I remember the only international flights allowed as being the repatriation flights. (e.g. when an overseas government organised for some non-Chinese who were in Wuhan to be able to come home). And presumably the return flights for planes that would otherwise have been stranded in Wuhan.
FactCheck matches my memory...
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...
Wikipedia for 23rd January says all outbound flights were banned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
And anyway, there's something wrong with the whole idea: if domestic flights were banned international flights were still allowed, wouldn't the people of Wuhan who wanted to get to Beijing just fly via Bangkok or Seoul? A ban on domestic-only flights wouldn't have achieved anything.
From a NYT article[1]:
> “I was surprised at how lax the whole process was,” said Andrew Wu, 31, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Beijing on March 10.
> Sabrina Fitch, 23, flew from China to Kennedy International Airport in New York on March 23.
> About 60 percent of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not American citizens, according to the most recently available government data.
So these were not only repatriation, but commercial flights.
The flight data also shows plenty of activity in February and March[2]. Whether those were only domestic flights or not is difficult to say, but clearly the shutdown wasn't total even domestically.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...
[2]: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/the-chinese-roller-coaste...
All the attempts to blame China for its response go out the window. It's plausible since there are claims that covid was detected in the US months before covid spread in Wuhan.
Please also tell us how the virus was found in frozen food imported from Argentina, Germany and India.
I've heard claims it spread in China months before it's official detection in Wuhan, but not regarding the US. Source?
https://en.ara.cat/society/inaccurate-data-led-to-belief-tha...
Not credible ones. In fact, the only people to bring this up are Chinese state media.
I keep hearing this, but I imagine if they banned outbound flights they'd be criticized to this day for trapping people in the country during the outbreak
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/first-covid-19-case-coul...
> "Another study by Australian scientists, published on Thursday in the Scientific Reports journal, used genomic data to show SARS-CoV-2 binds to human receptors far more easily than other species, suggesting it was already adapted to humans when it first emerged."
I think the evidence is steadily getting stronger for Sars-CoV-2 being the result of the accidental infection of a lab worker with a CRISPR-modified bat betacoronavirus that was being tested in human cell lines and/or genetically modified lab animals. From there it spread globally by train and airplane.
We can say that we don't have enough information to condemn them and all other countries involved in the lab leak theory, but this one mistake is solely on China's shoulders. Had they grounded all outbound international flights, countries would've had more time to prepare, yet we saw the meteoric rise in cases worldwide in February.