This is kind of a wild opinion to read from an American editorial board when the United States’ political and health authorities (not really independent entities) also slow-walked and minimized dangers. It just breezes right by the CDC delaying recommending masks, saying it wasn’t airborne, or required political approval of statements. Apparently democracies are only susceptible to misinformation, not political manipulation.

And lest this rest as just a “Trump bad in addition to misinformation”, we’ve still been dealing with the same problem with Biden’s CDC rushing to end the “pandemic” phase. They cut recommendations for staying home to 5 days, despite knowing people were infectious longer, said vaccinated people weren’t contagious, and revamped their primary decision-making map from a scary saturated red transmission map to a pleasing pastel “community levels” map based mostly on whether your local hospital was overloaded. It’s been a politically influenced (and sometimes muzzled) institution the whole time, with a consistent trend toward lessening precautions that would negatively impact politics and the economy.

That’s not to say China isn’t worse, and at least in America doctors were able to shout into the wind that all these moves were suspect without risk of arrest, but the assertion that authoritarian states meddle with health information and democracy don’t is just shockingly myopic. The United States had an objectively terrible response to the pandemic and not just because we let crazy people spread conspiracies.