Wuhan was shut down and word was out of a suspicious illness similar to pneumonia (what they knew at the time) in December 2019. China even went on to literally share a sequence of the virus’s DNA. All before the first international case was discovered.

Other countries just didn’t act.

This is just COVID misinformation and based in today’s culture of Sinophobia.

Edit: Of course, downvoted the truth because a racist lie is more comforting.

Literally the WHO timeline. (It seems the shutdown was actually in January 2020 not Dec 2019, China still worked closely with WHO and took the virus very seriously)

www.who.int/…/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19

31 Dec 2019

Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified.

12 January 2020

China publicly shared the genetic sequence of COVID-19.

13 January 2020

Officials confirm a case of COVID-19 in Thailand, the first recorded case outside of China.

(Editing note: first case in the US was Jan 18)

22 January 2020

WHO mission to China issued a statement saying that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan but more investigation was needed to understand the full extent of transmission.

22- 23 January 2020

The WHO Director- General convened an Emergency Committee (EC) under the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) to assess whether the outbreak constituted a public health emergency of international concern. The independent members from around the world could not reach a consensus based on the evidence available at the time. They asked to be reconvened within 10 days after receiving more information.

January 23 2020 was the day the Wuhan lockdown was initiated. After multiple statements and collaboration with WHO, while WHO would take that information to other countries and they would be unable to “reach a consensus”.

China kept working with WHO as well.

28 January 2020

A senior WHO delegation led by the Director-General travelled to Beijing to meet China’s leadership, learn more about China’s response, and to offer any technical assistance.

While in Beijing, Dr. Tedros agreed with Chinese government leaders that an international team of leading scientists would travel to China on a mission to better understand the context, the overall response, and exchange information and experience.

Compare this response to how America responded…

…wikipedia.org/…/COVID-19_misinformation_by_the_U…

Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic has been propagated by various public figures, including officials of the United States government. The Trump administration in particular made a large number of misleading statements about the pandemic.

According to a Reuters report published on June 14, 2024, the United States Armed Forces ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about Chinese COVID-19 vaccines in the Philippines, the wider Southeast Asia region, Central Asia, and the Middle East between the spring of 2020 and mid-2021. This disinformation campaign involved using fake social media accounts posing as native speakers to promote content emphasizing the Chinese origins of COVID-19 and alleging that the Sinovac vaccine was unsafe and contained pork-derived ingredients, making it haram under Islamic law.

Good point, launch the frozen demon core into the sun

time to get reacqaaaaainted

new meaning to retrovirus

Isn’t there rule 34?

As we saw with the COVID pandemic, even in “1st world countries”, poorer people were disproportionately affected. Fewer humans won’t help when the majority of harm to the Earth is perpetuated by a small fraction who would be disproportionately represented in a world where the majority of people died.

I sympathise with your sentiment, because it often does feel like humans are the problem, but the reality is that we’re not. Although it can feel weirdly comforting to think of humans as inherently and innately destructive, thinking this way is a pipeline to eco-fascism, which doesn’t offer productive ways forward.