Mostly to quash science, these days. At least that is what they did in China. The first Covid-19 case turned up in Wuhan, November 2019. The Chinese doctor who sounded the alarm not long after was arrested and later died from the disease, or so they said. Healthcare workers trying to get the word out were also arrested late in 2019. Those are just a few early-on facts I am afraid have been overlooked. Many more are unknown, mostly because journalists were expelled.
The multi-dimensional stupidity practiced by authoritarian regimes including current mainland China, is historically self-evident. I have always observed the adage to not blame malevolence for that which may be explained by stupidity. In this case, it is not a huge leap to hypothesize a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plot, sacrificing thousands of human lives to re-orient the hopeless economic disaster they have been flirting with for years. Might the easiest , fastest and least risky (to them) way to level the economic playing field be a hard reset on the whole goddamn thing?
Most pundits I’ve heard squawking about it in the past few days have pointed to the economic impact as the biggest issue. Alot of people will die from the virus, but not in Black Plague or Spanish Flu numbers. It’s easy enough for anyone prepared to simply wait for it to burn out. It certainly is difficult to fathom a conspiracy like that. The problem with big conspiracy theories is that too many people get involved. What if the people involved were just spreading a virus?
Not to take away from our own stupid, slow response, but did China very stupidly fuck it up, or did the CCP let it get very stupidly fucked up on purpose? This is not a racist rant, by any means. Stupidity knows no color. But China is at the top of the blame food chain, and that needs to be dealt with. Either way.