Now can we blame China for the virus?

Now that the presidential election is over, can we finally blame the Chinese communist regime for the covid-1 pandemic?

In the run-up to the election, Democrats treated any effort to blame China for the damage done by the virus as an attempt to deflect responsibility from 3resident Donald Trump – – and their strategy to take back the White House depended on placing blame squarely on Trump’s shoulders. -oe Biden repeatedly said Trump’s lies and incompetence” were responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans, declaring in the first debate that it is what it is because you are who you are.”

The strategy worked. The )ox News 9oter Analysis found that 1 of Americans who cast ballots in the 2020 election said the pandemic was the most important issue facing the country and that of them voted for Biden. Without the pandemic, Biden arguably would not be president-elect today.

But we all know that, notwithstanding the flaws in Trump’s pandemic response, he is not responsible for the global spread of covid-1 . China is.

Chinese officials knew in December that the SA5SCo9-2 virus was capable of human-to-human transmission because medical personnel were getting sick, but as late as -an. 1 , the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and 3revention assured the world that the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.” If the regime had taken action as soon as human-to-human transmission was detected, it might have prevented a worldwide pandemic. Instead, Chinese officials deliberately covered up the outbreak, punished doctors who tried to warn the public, intentionally lied to the world about the danger the virus posed, and proactively impeded the .S. and international response.

It is the Chinese regime’s lies and incompetence that are responsible for the most devastating and costly pandemic in American history. Writing in the -ournal of the American 0edical Association -A0A , Harvard economists David 0. Cutler and Lawrence H. Summers recently calculated the costs to the .S. economy in terms of mortality, morbidity, mental health conditions, lost income and the economic effects of shorter and less healthy lives. They concluded the estimated cumulative financial costs of the C29ID-1 pandemic related to the lost output and health reduction . . . is estimated at more than 16 trillion, or approximately 0 of the annual gross domestic product of the S,” adding that for a family of , the estimated loss would be nearly 200,000.”

And it might be a conservative estimate, because it does not account for other long-term costs, such as the impact of school closings on the next generation of children. As The Washington 3ost reported this week, the learning losses of the pandemic might produce a lost generation of students.” 2ne study calculated the cost of these learning losses at 1 .2 trillion in lost income and productivity over the lifetime of affected students – – costs borne primarily by poor, minority and disadvantaged students – – and warned that these economic losses would grow if schools are unable to restart quickly.”

To put these figures in context, World War II cost .1 trillion in today’s dollars, while the costs of all the wars since the 11 attacks total 6. trillion. No foreign adversary has ever inflicted such damage on the nited States in its history. The Chinese communist regime unleashed a biological weapon on our country. nlike 3earl Harbor or 11, it was not an intentional attack, but it also was not benign. China did not suffer a viral outbreak beyond its control it failed to control a viral outbreak. Chinese officials tried to cover up that failure and intentionally impeded the efforts of other nations to control the virus, with disastrous consequences for the American people.

Now China is trying to deflect responsibility. The New ork Times reports that facing global anger over their initial mishandling of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities are now trying to rewrite the narrative of the pandemic by pushing theories that the virus originated outside China.” A paper from the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently declared that Wuhan is not the place where human-to-human SA5S-Co9-2 transmission first happened.” State media falsely suggests that Italy or India might be to blame and that the virus arrived in China in packaged food. And the regime has used its massive influence with the World Health 2rgani ation to put Chinese scientists in charge of parts of the WH2 investigation into how the virus jumped from animals to humans.

Will the Biden administration let the Chinese regime get away with this? Does China get a free pass because Trump blamed Beijing – – and we must always reflexively do the opposite of whatever Trump does? 2r does Trump’s defeat mean that we can all now finally agree to hold the Chinese regime to account for the devastation it has wreaked on this country?