Your small business was shut down, never to reopen. Your child has been forced to wear a mask to school for more than a year. Your favorite restaurant has been permanently shuttered. All because the Chinese Communist Party lied to cover up the emergence of the COVID-19 virus.
It’s become increasingly clear that China took steps to downplay the severity of the COVID-19 virus as it began to spread by silencing doctors, reporting inaccurately low case numbers, and refusing to hand over crucial data about the coronavirus to international investigators. This is what it looks like when a brutal, authoritarian regime puts its own survival over that of people across the globe. It doesn’t help that China has close ties to the World Health Organization, the body responsible for understanding what happened at the beginning of the pandemic. Most Americans now believe that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan and that China deserves to pay.
Two years later, China’s communist regime still hasn’t been held accountable.
With the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Communist China has been given an international stage from which to trumpet its propaganda — not just about the coronavirus disaster but also for its genocide against the Uyghur Muslims and its aggression toward Taiwan. And thanks to President Joe Biden’s weak leadership, China is getting away with this.
This is infuriating to the millions of Americans who have been directly affected by the communist government’s reckless, dishonest, and evil behavior.
Just look at the toll the pandemic has taken on our children. Widespread forced masking has caused an explosion of parents bringing their babies and toddlers to therapists for help with speech delays, with one clinic seeing a 364% increase. As lockdowns disrupted daily life, children with special needs experienced a rise in anxiety and a loss of basic skills. Studies show that two years of remote learning will have lasting fallout across the board, too. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 97% of educators “saw some learning loss” in their students over the past year. Similarly, a McKinsey report found that students will miss out on around $60,000 in lifetime earnings due to the loss of learning, with black students hit hardest. For this, you can thank Communist China.
Our economy took a hit, too. Unemployment during the pandemic reached Great Depression levels. In the first year of the pandemic alone, 200,000 small businesses closed, above and beyond the typical number of yearly closures. According to Yelp, approximately 60% of businesses that shut down during the pandemic have closed permanently — many of them restaurants. Every one of these establishments represented someone’s dream, someone’s life savings, someone’s family business.
Then there’s the toll that can never be fully quantified. Millions of people lost their livelihoods and had their lives upended, causing depression rates to triple. As classes moved to online platforms and events were canceled across the board, attempted suicides, especially for teenage girls, surged. Loneliness and anxiety fueled mental health disorders. Social interactions were reduced to screens, with 63% of parents saying their teenager’s social media use increased during quarantine. Churches moved to virtual platforms, depriving congregants of spiritual encouragement and fellowship. Millions found themselves isolated and cut off from communities, and the Chinese communist government is to blame.
Democratic elites were mostly insulated from these consequences. In the midst of a statewide lockdown, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caught on camera maskless getting her hair done at a San Francisco salon. California Gov. Gavin Newsom was spotted dining maskless with friends at a fancy dinner party in Napa Valley and, more recently, along with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at the NFC championship game. It’s largely been regular, hardworking people who have paid the price for the pandemic — a price that has sometimes been tragic.
And if you’re waiting for Biden to make China pay, don’t hold your breath.
When asked why he hasn’t put pressure on China to be transparent about the virus’s origins, Biden simply smiled and waved off the question. In fact, Democrats are rewarding China. After a year of promising COVID-19 tests for every American, Biden has spent taxpayer dollars on tests produced in China and purchased from Chinese manufacturers. And in the House, Pelosi implemented a mask mandate and used taxpayer dollars to buy masks stamped “made in China” for members of Congress.
This is unacceptable. With all eyes on Beijing for the Games, it is essential that we recognize the Chinese Communist Party as the bad actor it is. Democrats continue to put our interests last. Come November, Republicans will hold China accountable. Until then, we’ll settle for Team USA beating them in the medal count.
Ronna McDaniel is the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.
