If it escaped a lab, via researchers accidentally infecting themselves and then started to spread, infecting a few people at the wet market as a cover might hav

If it escaped a lab, via researchers accidentally infecting themselves and then started to spread, infecting a few people at the wet market as a cover might have happened. Or just fabricating evidence that it started there would work. If it was a lab escape, the virus may have been from a number of sources, but one would think their end goal was to create a vaccine / study it. If you look at this from a high level, there were countries that did better with this and countries that did worse. On the whole, democratic, free countries have trouble controlling what their citizens do. So this has a slight benefit for countries that have more “control” over their citizens or stricter laws. Everyone loses something though, so I don’t think it was intentional. I would say the longest game would be to create a virus like this and the vaccine, vaccinate your people, then spread it and let the rest of the world deal with a pandemic. But then you still can’t control mutations. And I don’t think this was the case with this one at all. If it’s true, what do we do about it? Nothing. We can’t do anything. Saving face is likely more valued than the truth coming out, and it would potentially cause a revolution and great instability if this got out. It could be World War III and lead to more death. What does America do next time? Be a hell of a lot more aggressive with emerging illnesses and with our support. If it is a well known secret that they had a leak before but we don’t publicize it, other countries may be more welcoming to support and transparency if it happens again. I think all we can do in this case is look forward and put things in place so it doesn’t happen again.