The Coronavirus Outbreak
A top British scientist who pushed for a lockdown resigns after breaching the rules. In the Philippines, a broadcaster critical of the president has been forced off the air. The E.U. economy is set to shrink 7.4 percent in 2020 with unemployment reaching 9 percent.
Well, when I see people say, well America’s bullying the Chinese, we were demanding of them only what we demand of every nation: Be transparent, be open, be a reliable partner — the very things they say, the Chinese say they want to cooperate. Great, cooperation is about action. It’s about opening up. It’s about sharing this information. So the details of where “patient zero,” where this began are things that are knowledge that’s in the possession of only the Chinese Communist Party. They’re the ones that can help unlock that — if they need technical assistance, we’re happy to provide that assistance to them. We do need — the world needs — answers to these these questions for not only the current moment, but so that we can make sure that we reduce the risk that something like this could ever happen again with thousands and thousands of lives lost, and enormous economic cost to the entire world. We don’t have certainty, and there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. Those statements can both be true. I’ve made them both. Administration officials have made them. They’re all true. The most important piece here is that the American people remain at risk. The American people remain at risk because we do not know, to your point. We don’t have certainty about whether it began in the lab or whether it began someplace else. There’s an easy way to find out the answer to that: Transparency, openness, the kinds of things that nations do when they really want to be part of solving a global pandemic, when they really want to participate in the things that keep human beings safe, and get economies going back again.