by Dave Seminara
Real Clear Politics
China is testing President Biden, but his party is still preoccupied with Donald Trump. Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw data on early COVID-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus spread in China. The stakes in learning as much as we can from this pandemic couldn’t be higher. But it’s unclear if our new leaders are ready to confront China’s increasingly intransigent leaders, who are keen to promote unlikely theories on the origins of the virus that absolve them of culpability.
The virus has killed nearly 2.5 million people worldwide and the International Monetary Fund has estimated that the global cost of the pandemic is $28 trillion. A paper published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, put the total cost in the U.S. at more than $16 trillion, or nearly $200,000 for a family of four. With case counts declining and vaccines here, we now see a light at the end of the tunnel, but this is no time for complacency. This should be a “never again” moment where we steadfastly resolve to do everything in our power to ensure that we never experience another catastrophic plague like this one again.