Is the COVID-19 pandemic racial? Yes, it's racial.

At the opening news conference in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump (far right) appeared with his Covid-19 team, including Dr. Anthony Fauci (far left), Treasury Sec. Mnuchin (behind sign), VP Mike Pence, Dr. Deborah Birx, HHS Sec. Alex Azar.

By Carolyn Yeager

IT'S NOT BEING CALLED THE CHINESE VIRUS FOR NOTHING.

Just this morning, I read on the Deutsche Welle coronavirus update web page -

14:18 Chinese police acted "inappropriately" towards Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang, who raised the alarm on the new outbreak, according to investigators from the central government. Li was reprimanded by the authorities in December for posting information about the epidemic on social media, before the government officially acknowledged the issue. The 34-year-old doctor was made to sign a pledge not to commit any more "law-breaking actions."

Li died of the new coronavirus in February, with his death prompting anti-government outrage on social media.

The investigators "suggest" that Wuhan authorities "supervise and rectify the matter" as well as posthumously revoke the disciplinary statement issued to Li, China's state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday.”

At the White House press conference today, Donald Trump indicated by certain statements that he is well aware of the facts and will pursue this topic in the future. First things first, he needs to put all his attention on slowing the pandemic in the US, but it will not be forgotten once the damage caused by this virus has subsided. Some lawmakers, including my favorite senator, are already on that task.

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) on Wednesday warned the Chinese Communist Party that it would have “to pay” for its attempts to cover up the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, and called for a “full, international investigation” to get to the bottom of the situation.

“There needs to be a full, international investigation of #China Communist Party’s actions that helped turn #coronavirus #COVID19 into a global pandemic,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday morning.

The freshman senator was referencing a story that Beijing has attempted to drown out with a propaganda campaign. China on Tuesday stripped press passes from reporters at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post who were stationed in China and Hong Kong, its latest action to escape accountability and international censure over its handling the outbreak.

In December, genomics laboratories in Wuhan sequenced coronavirus and discovered it closely resembled the deadly SARS virus which broke out in 2002-2003, but were subsequently gagged by authorities, who ordered them to turn over or destroy the samples.

Hawley, a China hawk who slammed the regime for its crackdown on Hong Kong protestors in the fall, has been vocal in recent months as the coronavirus pandemic grew. He sent a letter in January to the heads of four government agencies to ask whether the Trump administration was considering any potential Chinese travel ban to prevent an American outbreak of the coronavirus — a move the White House made soon after.

Last month, the senator introduced legislation to reorient medical supply chains and to reduce reliance on China for the manufacture of certain prescription drugs and other medical supplies.

Orthodox Jewry is also contributing to the spread of the coronavirus:

Members of New York City’s Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish community openly defied social distancing orders Tuesday by hosting raucous weddings with hundreds of guests amid the growing spread of coronavirus. 

The first outbreak in New York was centered in the Jewish community of New Rochelle in Westchester County, brought in by an orthodox man who returned from overseas carrying it and spread it within his synagogue. We have two “foreign” cultures: the Chinese with their live-animal food markets, and the Orthodox Jews with their dislike of bathing, their closely-packed living spaces and extra-large families. When all this is said and done, our country may be ready to consider that total religious freedom, which has attracted so many culturally alien sects to the USA, may need to be reconsidered in that light.

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A young Republican Congressman from Texas District 27, Michael Cloud, has published a tough opinion piece on Fox News setting out the argument for changing our relationship with China now. He starts out:

Through a series of lies, blunders and cover-ups, the communist government of China has intensified the spread of the novel coronavirus. Tragically, the United States and over 130 other countries are now dealing with the serious health and economic impacts of this global emergency. 

After decades of unethical trade practices and human rights violations, the coronavirus crisis should be the final straw against China’s case for global leadership. The Chinese government has used the benefits of participation in world markets to further strengthen its control over the Chinese people, to strong-arm other nations and to finance its aspirations for world dominance. 

Cloud goes on to detail why China is not a reliable partner and is even a danger to the rest of the world. “[T]he United States relies too heavily on Chinese-made pharmaceuticals and medical devices.”

Reliance on China also puts much of our supply chain at risk, since parts used in the construction of so many American-made products come from China. The Port of Los Angeles is projecting a 25 percent drop in container volumes this month as shipping out of China plunges.

[…]

Companies should seriously consider moving production to the United States or one of our many trading partners that have much better records than China.

India, the world’s second-largest nation, is an American ally, an important partner in military and cybersecurity affairs, and a major purchaser of U.S. crude oil exports. Our nations already share a $142 billion bilateral trade partnership. 

Indian Barnini Chakraborty writes for Fox News: 

It's an extraordinary transformation

In a matter of weeks, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party have apparently managed to convince the world to foget that they muzzled the coronavirus for months as it grew into what is now a global pandemic, silencing doctors and critics whose early alarms could have saved thousands of lives. Instead, the communist-run nation has now positioned itself as the country ahead of the coronavirus curve, even as they make unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. is behind the crisis.

[...]

“Two narrative tracks that we're seeing advanced by China is malign information trying to finger the US as the orgin of the coronavirus, and then the second narrative track is what we call 'Brand China,' which is the [Chinese government's] effort to try and turn the crisis into a news story about the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party as opposed to democratic systems that have allegedly mishandled the crisis,” U.S. Special Envoy Lea Gabrielle told The Washington Times. “So [it’s] basically a 'China' good, everyone else bad’ narrative.”

As our national response to this unprecedented pandemic continues, I'll present updates that I think are most informative and important to my readers. Good luck to you all.