Death and disruption breed anger. A lot of people are now looking for someone to blame for the pandemic and China is an obvious target. It has a leadership which is authoritarian at home and menacing abroad. Its human rights record is deplorable. Western memories still encompass the invasion of Tibet. Today, its wet markets offend Western sensibilities – they sound like a cruel and unhygienic way of threatening endangered species. Above all, there is Wuhan.
Many people are now convinced that something went wrong in a biological research laboratory and that the wet markets may well have given a further impetus to the spreading virus. If the Chinese had been honest about this virus from the outset, western countries could have taken action earlier so there would have been fewer deaths and less economic damage. Instead, the Chinese leadership seems to have concentrated its energies on muzzling the likes of Dr Li: who tried to warn the world, was visited by the police, and then died, young.
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