A lot of noteworthy things are being buried by the avalanche of news about the COVID-19 pandemic. One that passed last week was the fact that two Canadians have now spent more than 500 days of captivity in China.

If anything, the pandemic has made the conditions of their detention even worse. They’ve been in prison lockdown since early February, cut off from almost all contact with family and consular assistance.

The “two Michaels,” Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were in an awfully tough spot before the pandemic struck.

They were arrested in December, 2018, on trumped-up espionage charges that could carry the death penalty, in clear retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the senior executive of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, after U.S. authorities requested her extradition.

The two Michaels are pawns in a legal fight between Washington and Beijing, with Ottawa trying to avoid being crunched in the middle.

But the way the COVID-19 crisis has unfolded shows that’s not the half of it. China’s rulers are showing themselves to be even more ruthless, more secretive, and more intolerant of criticism as the weeks go by.

There are, of course, the increasingly pointed questions about how far Chinese authorities went in covering up early signs of the coronavirus outbreak in Hubei province, which has now spread around the globe.

Those criticisms aren’t just coming from the likes of Donald Trump. Countries like Britain and France are urging an investigation into China’s mismanagement of the pandemic, as are people like Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and renowned human rights campaigner.

Cotler signed a statement condemning China for covering up early signs of the pandemic’s spread and persecuting Chinese doctors who tried to get the news out. He calls it “China’s Chernobyl,” the moment when the system’s internal flaws inflict damage on the entire world.

No wonder China’s government has become ultra-sensitive. When the Trudeau government issued a mild statement last week expressing concern about the latest crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, the Chinese embassy in Ottawa snapped back with a statement of its own accusing Canada of “gross interference” in China’s internal affairs.