You remind me of a New York Times article in Jan 2020 claiming, correctly, that trust in government is the most important part in fighting a pandemic, and Chinese people's lack of trust in Beijing is what will prevent China from combating it.Trust is hard to construct and easy to destroy. With notorious bad quality and fraud in the past, it is hard for the Chinese to believe in domestic drugs and foods. It takes a long time to gain trust and increase quality checks from the Chinese government.
That didn't age well.
If people who trust China lives and people who don't dies, that's just natural selection