MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-12-15 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] The Chinese Virus
|
aei.org
The election is over. Can we finally blame China for the pandemic? |
American Enterprise Institute - AEI
Marc A. Thiessen -at-marcthiessen
5-6 minutes
email print
Op-Ed
December 9, 2020
Now that the presidential election is over, can we finally blame the
Chinese communist regime for the covid-19 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 President Trump — and their strategy to take back
the White House depended on placing blame squarely on Trump’s shoulders.
Joe 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 Fox News Voter Analysis found that 41 percent
of Americans who cast ballots in the 2020 election said the pandemic was
the most important issue facing the country and that 73 percent 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-19. China is.
Chinese officials knew in December that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was capable
of human-to-human transmission because medical personnel were getting
sick, but as late as Jan. 15, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease
Control and Prevention 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 US 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 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),
Harvard economists David M. Cutler and Lawrence H. Summers recently
calculated the costs to the US 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 COVID-19 pandemic related to the lost output and
health reduction … is estimated at more than $16 trillion, or
approximately 90% of the annual gross domestic product of the US,”
adding that “for a family of 4, 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 Post reported this week, the learning
losses of the pandemic might produce a “lost generation of students.”
One study calculated the cost of these learning losses at $14.2 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 $4.1 trillion in
today’s dollars, while the costs of all the wars since the 9/11 attacks
total $6.4 trillion. No foreign adversary has ever inflicted such damage
on the United States in its history. The Chinese communist regime
unleashed a biological weapon on our country. Unlike Pearl Harbor or
9/11, 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 York 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 SARS-CoV-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 Organization to put Chinese scientists in charge of parts of the
WHO 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? Or 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?
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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