Boston Herald

Biden should make China pay for COVID subterfuge

- By Betsy Mccaughey Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of “The Next Pandemic.”

President Joe Biden is in Europe to meet with European leaders. He says the goal is to work together to “deliver real results” on critical issues, like climate change and cybersecur­ity. Biden is ducking the most important issue — the cause of the pandemic. He should be marshaling allies to act in unison by squeezing China to get answers.

Damning evidence published on the opinion page of The Wall Street Journal recently shows that COVID19’s genetic sequence is found nowhere in nature, making it unlikely the killer virus leaped from animals to humans naturally. Scientists Dr. Stephen Quay and Richard Muller argue that the COVID-19 genetic sequence is exactly what researcher­s would choose to use to engineer a virus for maximum infectivit­y against humans. Other recent analyses of the virus also point to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology — not nature — as the source of the pandemic. In science, nothing is settled. New evidence could still emerge and point in another direction.

But there is no doubt that China acted criminally once the virus began circulatin­g in Wuhan in 2019. China hid the virus’s existence for weeks, denied that it could spread human to human, muzzled its scientists and blocked outside scientists from investigat­ing — all in violation of Articles 6 and 7 of WHO’s Internatio­nal Health Regulation­s.

Biden should be leading a multinatio­nal effort to isolate China, get answers and demand reparation­s. Without answers, warns Baylor College of Medicine epidemiolo­gist Peter Hotez, there will be a COVID-26 and a COVID-32, meaning more viral disasters.

Biden’s merely going through the motions, appearing to take action but doing nothing. He’s called for a 90-day investigat­ion by U.S. intelligen­ce agencies. That’s mere paper-shuffling. As Hotez says, “We’ve pushed intelligen­ce as far as we can.” Scientists need to collect lab samples from Wuhan and biological samples from the earliest COVID-19 patients.

The Biden administra­tion has also called on the WHO to investigat­e again. WHO allowed China to handpick the first investigat­ion team, ban access to actual biological evidence and veto conclusion­s it didn’t like. There’s no point to a second WHO investigat­ion. WHO remains a puppet to China, still bowing to demands to exclude Taiwan from meetings on COVID19.

To get the truth, The New York Post proposed an important remedy — a commission created by an act of Congress relying on nonpartisa­n scientists, not the likes of Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak, and the NIH’s Francis Collins. They misled Congress and the nation with a naive globalist viewpoint that put us in danger. Fauci told Congress that the Wuhan lab staff are “competent, trustworth­y scientists,” never mind their germ warfare projects for the Chinese Communist military.

Last week, Biden commented that China believes in a few years it “will own America.” What’s your strategy, Mr. President? So far, only weakness.

It’s a stark contrast to former President Donald Trump, who declared on Saturday night that “the time has come for America and the world to demand reparation­s and accountabi­lity from the Communist Party of China.”

Trump proposed that “as a first step, all countries should collective­ly cancel all debt they owe to China as a down payment for reparation­s.” Some 150 countries are indebted to China. The U.S. owes $1.1 trillion.

Trump’s proposal is unorthodox. Economists warn defaulting will harm our ability to borrow in the future — ordinarily, a compelling concern. But the argument holds less water if all major countries collective­ly agree to enforce reparation­s against China this way.

One thing is clear. Unless China is made to pay, Americans will pay with their lives.

 ?? AP file ?? BEHIND A BARRICADE: China kept World Health Organizati­on investigat­ors from looking closely at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
AP file BEHIND A BARRICADE: China kept World Health Organizati­on investigat­ors from looking closely at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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