Show me the data. All existing data points to the fact that the Chinese largely beat this and have handled it in a way that is orders of magnitude more effectiv

Show me the data. All existing data points to the fact that the Chinese largely beat this and have handled it in a way that is orders of magnitude more effective than the Americans. That includes anecdata I have coming from internal sources who have no reason to lie. If there was ANY data suggesting otherwise, you would have heard about it: they couldn't contain news about the original outbreak or any follow on outbreaks. A few months into this, basically every single American media outlet was tripping over themselves to defend American values when it was abundantly clear that they were impeding our ability to successfully respond to this crisis. There was a huge appetite for bashing China / authoritarianism and pointing out the universal superiority of our system. The fact that we have largely heard nothing about the Chinese response (no criticism, no praise, no critique, not even general acknowledgement that it was much different than ours) from the government or the media suggests that it was a success whereas our efforts were a colossal failure and we don't want to talk about it or admit it: this situation doesn't align with the story we tell ourselves ((freedom and democracy) > authoritarianism, always). > If the news wasn't telling me about the Virus all the time, I would not know there was a "raging" epidemic. I only know one person who contracted the virus among my entire family and friends group We are basically a year into this with 500K dead and counting. How many citizens need to die before people stop feeling the need to create throwaway accounts to announce that this whole thing is overblown.