I have variations of this thought about once a month. The modern CCP is many things, but "wildly incompetent at the national scale, for extended periods of time

I have variations of this thought about once a month. The modern CCP is many things, but "wildly incompetent at the national scale, for extended periods of time, at the cost of potentially destroying their own country" is not something I would be quick to label them as. There is a part of me that thinks that they either know something that we do not about the current disease, or they know something we don't about something that is to come. Maybe they're concerned about working out the kinks of managing a society during a pandemic, with COVID as a trial run. Their level of control seems insane when what we're dealing with is COVID (as far as we know), but what if we're dealing with something worse? Suddenly the civil liberties and laissez faire take of the west is an unimaginable disadvantage.