1. In early December 2019, there is an outbreak of an unknown disease in Wuhan, likely from a natural source but possibly from a lab leak
2. Regional CCP officials, worried about how it will reflect, do not notify the central government in the belief that they can handle it.
3. The disease continues to spread, and while Wuhan health services are aware, the severity is not communicated to the national authorities especially ahead of holidays. Thousands are unknowingly infected.
4. On December 30, Li Wenliang inadvertently exposes the existence of the disease to the world.
5. The next day, national health authorities are forced to take action.
6. Over the next three weeks, national authorities, operating under the same assumption that it can be contained like SARS with minimal public panic
7. Understanding the scale of disaster, Wuhan is shut down
8. On January 30, Covid is declared a public health emergency
9. In the months and years following this, the Chinese government, like any government, seeks to minimize their culpability and purges local CCP officials who were responsible for downplaying it
10. Through a series of increasingly incompetent, malicious, and ignorant actions at many levels of the government, covid was allowed to become a deadly pandemic.
    

This, in my mind, is the most compelling explanation. It’s far more of a Chernobyl situation or an airplane crash. Many intersecting failures arising out of individual actions that were so negligent and embarrassing that central authorities feel the need to cover it up. Not some vast, top down conspiracy from day 1.