My belief is that China intentionally released and/or intentionally lied about the virus.

The world responded appropriately, treating it as serious.

People in power realized they'd been handed a golden goose and started enacting more and more policies to virtue signal, without having any idea if the underlying facts.

As facts came out, reversing decisions would be seen as not virtue signaling, so they suppress the facts.

I attribute this malicious stupidity to people being stupidly malicious.