Did anyone really think, at any point that China was/is/will be honest about Covid, or anything else for that matter?
I doubt they deliberately spread it. As we know only too well they are not stupid and know such things tend to turn on their creators. We have seen Chinese indifference to human welfare, why should they be expected to show more concern about animal welfare?
What I hope will come out of this crisis is a greater realisation of the threat China poses to the rest of the world and a realisation that our obsession with the market economy has made us over reliant on China for manufactured goods and technology and that we need to become more self sufficient, in food, in manufactured goods and more controlled in what technology we sell overseas and what technology we buy.
The desperate shortage of PPE is a direct result on our over reliance on importing it cheaply from other countries, like China, where in a crisis like this we are in competition with every other country in the world for it and the complete lack of any manufacturing capacity in this country that can rapidly increase production or can quickly change from manufacturing clothing, uniforms or other similar goods in quantity.