The way I see it, it got out one of three ways.
The ugliest option, of course, is an intentional release into a population that travels, for the purpose of spreading it all over the planet.
Another option is that the release was accidental, a violation of BSL-4 protocils which allowed the virus to escape the lab and spread.
A third option, is that someone was selling lab animals to the market after the lab was done with them (instead of cremating them), for a little extra money on the side, and that got the virus out.
Whatever the case, where the real damage was done was after the Chinese realized they had a problem.
Instead of shutting down, quarantining the province, and trying to contain the outbreak, the reaction was o destroy samples, destroy records, blame the "wet market" (basically an open air fish market/butcher shop/grocery store) and act like it wasn't a serious problem--until that could no longer be concealed. By that time, the virus was around the world.
That is the part that lends credence to thoughts of intentional transmission/release.
All of that is good thinking, and I can add no more, except against the proposed conclusion...
It may be a matter of saving face, and an inept communistic supposition that the state could effectively control situation... Until they found they could not. There need be nothing nefarious about it, except in the trying to cover it up...
And just as likely on the nefarious side, a distribution engineered by the same international forces that funded the lab in the first place - pointing the finger at China as the bagholder... And China IS the bagholder right now... Everybody hates them, and their markets are trashed... I fail to see the advantage for China in any of this.
So I really am unwilling to speculate without more evidence. But if the responsibility is on China, it is for ineptitude more than intent. This has not been good for them in any way.
As for reaction being the same all over, well, everyone (country wise) has a pandemic plan gamed out in advance, no matter how thin or poor it is. Most of those plans will be like any disaster response, shaped by the ideas of understanding what is going on, containing the problem, trying to figure out how to treat those affected, and keep it from getting worse. No matter where you are, the go-to steps will be pretty much the same.
Like a house fire, you assess it, find out if anyone is inside and launch rescue efforts, even as you are cutting power to the building/affected part, and taking steps to control the fire. The steps are pretty much the same, no matter where you are.
But in those initial moments of panic/energetic evaluation, the doctors turned to a common source for information, one which was supposed to be a global clearinghouse for information, steps to take, treatments/remedies, and as such had a ready centralized source for erroneous information (WHO), and they all got the same stuff to guide their responses.
This remains the problem with monolithic response patterns, especially when they are run by agencies staffed with people who let their incompetence and prejudices (externally motivated or not) interfere with the ability of thousands of doctors, virologists, and biochemists to adapt existing pharma and technique to fight a disease, only for those doctors and their remedies to be ignored or even decried by the global agency.
It remains one of my fundamental objections to the concentration of any kind of power, in that solutions to problems can be discovered far more quickly if the results of the efforts of thousands of teams can be weighed, without prejudice and the appropriate steps adopted and rechecked by others without the restrictions imposed by people who have a pecuniary interest in specific other measures. All that need be is a forum for the exchange of information, and that cannot work if some are limiting the access of others because they believe differently or seek another avenue of approach which is more personally profitable.
That's all right, except in that the information has been a farce. Any national interest, any sovereignty, ought to dang well know it's a farce, and in some independent instances, that actually happened. But by and large, nations bent to the world view purposefully... Which lends itself to collusion as evidenced by those that did not follow the piper. And those following the piper greatly increased national power against their citizens, and liberty has suffered greatly. A amazingly homogeneous result, that I do not believe is by coincidence.
