I think the public is simply unaware of how bad the "regular" flu can be... it's a long tail but every year otherwise apparently young healthy people die of the flu. Not to mention confounding factors of latent conditions and concurrent diseases.
The implication of conspiracy theories is that the Chinese government:
* Perfectly covered up the initial outbreak
* Took no further action
* Utterly failed to cover the "second leak" that led to the pandemic
Seems unlikely?
An alternative theory is social media now disproportionately focuses on the regular bell-curve extremes of our normal flu season.
My wife and I visited Iceland last July. 5 days of the trip were spent trekking in the backcountry with a group from 4 different continents. When we got home, my wife came down with a terrible case of the flu that led to pneumonia. She never needed to be hospitalized but it was close for a couple days.
Eventually, it spread to my son and myself. It's the sickest I've ever been in my 40+ years of life. We didn't return to anything resembling normal until early October. It can't have been COVID but there must have been at least one really nasty flu bug going around last year.
The implication of conspiracy theories is that the Chinese government:
* Perfectly covered up the initial outbreak
* Took no further action
* Utterly failed to cover the "second leak" that led to the pandemic
Seems unlikely?
An alternative theory is social media now disproportionately focuses on the regular bell-curve extremes of our normal flu season.