In China’s latest efforts to hide the truth about COVID-19, the communist regime has issued explicit guidance to censor academic papers on the virus. By order of the government, research related to the origins of the virus must go all the way to the top, to the central government, before researchers are permitted to submit their work for publication. It is already established that the vicious disease was “made in China,” but there is still quite a bit unknown about how it actually originated. The more we know, the better we can handle the pandemic now and hopefully prevent or mitigate another one in the future.

COVID-19 is a disease that has killed more than 120,000 human beings, sickened nearly 2 million, and has brought punishing financial pain to millions. The United States should do all it can within the limits of the Constitution to eliminate the virus inside the country and should work with responsible partners and allies to help them fight it in theirs too. But it cannot trust the Chinese Communist Party to cooperate on combating COVID-19 until it comes clean about the origins of the virus, what it knew about the disease, and when it knew it.