Two years ago, the world first encountered a dangerous new coronavirus as reports of an outbreak slowly leaked out of Wuhan, China. Since then, COVID-19 has killed 5.4 million people worldwide, including more than 800,000 Americans. Our economy, our children, and our communities have suffered from the virus and the destructive policies that followed.
But due to the secrecy and blatant obstructionism of the Chinese Communist Party, the virus’s origin remains a mystery. This is simply unacceptable. The world deserves to know the truth about COVID-19, and the U.S. government should punish those who are keeping the facts in the dark.
Though the virus originated in China, the CCP has been deliberately uncooperative since the very beginning. The regime was aware of a contagious pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan by perhaps as early as mid-November of 2019. And yet, Beijing withheld this critical information from the world until Jan. 20, 2020, actively denying the possibility of person-to-person transmission and misleading the public with a refrain of “a preventable and controllable epidemic.”
Even the regime’s initial admission of an “outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause” on Dec. 31 came only because whistleblowers, conscientious doctors who were subsequently punished by the authorities and state media, had forced its hand by leaking a confidential memo.
And let’s not forget that the public notice on Dec. 31 did not admit that the new disease was caused by a highly contagious coronavirus, even though we know (from a brave instance of Chinese investigative reporting) that it had been sequenced multiple times by then. Nor should we forget that Beijing refused to share genomic sequences of the new coronavirus until after a courageous Chinese scientist defied the government’s gag order on Jan. 11. The CCP even ordered labs to destroy virus samples.
That early obstruction continued. Last year, the CCP refused to give the World Health Organization access to critical raw data of the earliest known and suspected cases of COVID-19 and denied the WHO’s request to explore the lab leak hypothesis in Wuhan. The National Intelligence Council reports that “Beijing … continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information, and blame other countries.”
Denial and deception are common tactics of an authoritarian, genocidal regime. What is more alarming is that some U.S. government officials have also covered up facts about COVID-19’s origin.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, misled the public about the possibility that the virus originated from scientific experimentation at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci, who appears comfortable deciding what facts people do and don’t deserve to know, insisted without any evidence that the virus behind COVID-19 “was in the wild to begin with.” He also blatantly lied to the people, playing word games with the definition of “gain-of-function” research to hide the fact that U.S. tax dollars had funded coronavirus research in China.
Today, we know that the WIV had received grant money from multiple U.S. government agencies, primarily as a sub-grantee of the EcoHealth Alliance, and we know that Chinese researchers were performing risky experiments on coronaviruses, one of which could easily have leaked into the public.
Obstructionism, whether from within our borders or without, is unjust and an affront to the memory of the millions who have died from this disease. It deserves a response.
Along with Republican colleagues, I have introduced the COVID Act in the Senate. This bill would place sanctions on Chinese authorities that continue to hide the truth and cut funding for research collaboration if Beijing does not allow a forensic investigation into the coronavirus’s source. This bill is good governance and commonsense, but, unfortunately, Democrats are not interested in pressuring the CCP when it comes to the origin of COVID-19.
After two years of infections, lockdowns, and social isolation, the facts about this disease’s origin need to come to light. Beijing may continue to obstruct, but there should be painful consequences for doing so.
Marco Rubio is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.
