the virus is real. its a natural event caused by the random factors of nature.
bad hygiene of handling wild animals is much more riskier then farming domestic livestock.
livestock has regulations about hygiene where they are homed. vetinary inspections and such.
wild animal hunting does not. illegal markets dont.
so the virus was always going to pass from animal to human via wildlife markets
how governments react. well that is political
we have australia that locked down its borders and anyone coming in has to quarantine no matter what. regularly tested while in quarantine and if they show positive the quarantine is extented
then we have UK/US that done repatriation flights. didnt isolate people and took a year to even think about quarantining those crossing the border, thus allowing the spread within US/UK
the virus does mutate all the time but some are so minor it does not matter pathologically vs vaccine effectiveness. looking at the virus sequences from december-march (120 days) there were 15 generations of the virus
its roughly a year before a variant lineage in one community differs enough from a variant lineage in another or even its early ancestors
the fear is not that the lineages can make vaccinations useless in 8 days via the minor variations
but that if out of say 10million people infected at any one time around the world. the odds are that one person may come into contact with 2 different strains at one time from 2 strangers and cause a 'mega' mutation in what they then exhale once infected by both. nd then that mega mutation spread fast
and this is why they dont want different variants mixing in different communities and they want people to remain social distancing and limiting how many people come into contact with them. because if you dont approach dozens of strangers a week you are avoiding getting hit by multiple strains. if those strangers didnt come from different communities. then the risk of them having different strains is gone. so its a double layer solution to a mega variant risk.
yes politics can get in the way. health departments opposing economy departments. health wanting you to stay home and not mix economy wanting you to mix..
also opportunists trying to take advantage of the situation in the middle.
take the UK minister that authorised his best friend that had no PPE distribution/sourcing experience to be awarded a contract to source PPE.(his management experience was owning a pub)
take trumps son-in-aw that last year went on a buying binge of PPE outbidding hospitals to try stockpiling PPE 'for the fed' while taking that supply away from potential hospitals. just to then sell it to the hospitals at higher prices(personal profit) knowing the hospitals would later be reimbursed by the treasury
take other ministers/congress/senators trying to score political points by publicising different viewpoints purely to win voter trust