Coronavirus Deception: Made in China

A lot of things about the coronavirus are out of our control — but how we approach China isn’t one of them. And in a country where consensus is as rare as hand sanitizer, the outrage over the outbreak might be the single greatest exception. While Democrats in Washington keep their fingers pointed at President Trump, they’re about the only ones, polling shows. Most Americans know exactly who’s at fault — and who should pay.

“It’s as much of a consensus issue as you can get in today’s divided world,” the Harris Poll’s Mark Penn explained. Americans don’t trust China. Period. It doesn’t matter what party they’re from, they blame the government for the spread of the pandemic and want the U.S. to start playing hardball on trade and every other issue. They agree with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): our response has got to “sting.” And it’s got to sting enough to force them to change.

This is a crisis, after all, that never had to happen. Had China warned the world even a week sooner, the AP reported, we could have cut the world’s infections by two-thirds. That’s tens of thousands of real lives — moms and dads, grandparents, and children who will never come home again because officials in Beijing didn’t want to admit their mistake. “I think they were trying to put it out. Stop it. Not be embarrassed by it,” Graham said on “Washington Watch.” “This would be the third pandemic [they’re responsible for].” All they had to be was honest, he pointed out, and we “wouldn’t have 70,000 dead Americans and 30 million people out of work.”

So what now? “Make sure China cooperates,” Graham insisted. “We should sanction the heck out of [them] until they agree to allow the world into China to figure out what happened…” His own bill, introduced last week, is about as hard-hitting as it gets. “No visa travel, no students coming in to study, no access to American banks… until they cooperate with investigators… and they close those wet markets…”