COVID-19: The Preventable Pandemic – Heritage.org

When The Heritage Foundation releasedits comprehensive reporton the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic,headlines tended to focus on the cost to the U.S. Thats not surprising: At an eye-popping $18 trillion,its almost 10 times the projected 2024 budget deficit.

Arguably, however, the Commissions most infuriating conclusion was this: The global pandemic was totally preventable, in the words of Commissioner Dr. Robert Redfield, an experienced virologist who headed the CDC during the outbreak.

Had the Chinese government been more transparent and cooperative at the outset of the pandemic, millions of lives and trillions of dollars could have been spared. The pandemics proximal origin, the Commission found, was the Chinese governments aggressive opposition to honesty, transparency, and accountability along with its systemic cover up.

The Cover-Up

The Commissiona blue-ribbon team of experts led by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and supported by data scientists, economists, and lawyersconcluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus began circulating months before Beijing warned the world, likely in August-September 2019. The Chinese government then not only withheld key details, it engaged in an elaborate and deadly coverup.

Dr. Jamie Metzlone of the Commissions Democrats who served at the National Security Council, U.S. Senate, and State Departmentcondemned Beijing for having destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned Chinese citizen journalists, gagged Chinese scientists, blocked any meaningful international investigations, and cynically sandbagged the World Health Organization.

Ratcliffe described Chinas behavior during this period as frankly inexcusable.

Added Metzl: There can be, in our view, little doubt that Chinas government is primarily responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. But for the unique pathologies of the Chinese state, there very likely would have beenno pandemic at all.

The Cost

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is considered one of the seven deadliest plagues in human history, with excess deaths topping 28 million, according to some estimates. The World Bank has characterized the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic as the largest global economic crisis in more than a century, with low-income countries hit the hardest.

The Commissions assessment that the pandemic cost the U.S. alone $18 trillion includes $8.6 trillion in excess deaths, $1.8 trillion in income lost, $6 trillion in chronic conditions like long COVID, $1.1 trillion in mental health costs, and $400 million in education losses.

The Origin

While the origin of the pandemic wasnt the focus of the Commission, notably all nine Commissioners concluded, without dissent, that the pandemic very likely stemmed from a research-related incident in Wuhan.

Indeed,evidence continues to emergefurther strengthening the lab leak theory and casting greater doubt on the natural spillover theory. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was at the time conducting dangerous gain of function experiments to make coronaviruses more transmissible to humans, and it was doing so in alarmingly unsafe conditions.

The WIV experienced an unspecified incident in 2019, when several lab workers fell sick, the Chinese military abruptly assumed control of the lab, the lab mysteriously deleted its online database of over 10,000 bat virus samples at 2:00am, and ordered an expensive new air incinerator. A Chinese military scientist then produced a vaccine with logic-defying speed before suddenly going missing and being scrubbed from government records.

In recent months, new details have emerged about a 2018 grant proposal that sought funding to manipulate coronaviruses at the WIV in very specific waysways that exactly match the highly unusual features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that have never been seen in nature.

At the event unveiling the Heritage report, Dr. Redfield contended SARS-CoV-2 shows clear signs of engineering and its origin had nothing to do with a natural spillover event at a Wuhan animal market. The full Commission report concludes that despite four years of extensive hypothesis testing, today there isno evidentiary basis for the theory of natural spillover. The handful of early pandemic academic papers advancing the natural spillover theory have since been hollowed out by fatal challenges to their underlying methods and conclusions.

Rather than a viral leap from animal to humans, Dr. Redfield contended that the pandemic was a direct consequence of scientific arrogance, with the scientists that were intentionally teaching this virus how to infect humans never recognizing something would ever go wrong. And, in fact, unfortunately this virus did escape.

Preventing Another Pandemic

To avoid a future pandemic and hold the Chinese government accountable, the Commission report concluded with several practical recommendations for the U.S. government:

The COVID-19 pandemic was almost certainly the deadliest and costliest event of the 21st century. Beijings ability to escape virtually any accountabilityand the global medias relative disinterest in the pandemics origins, cost, and Chinas culpabilityare equal parts confounding and infuriating.

Chinas response to SARS1 20 years ago was abysmal, Dr. Metzl argued at the Heritage event. Chinas response to SARS2, 20 years later despite all these international processes, was even worse. And the reasonis there was no accountability for all the obfuscation in the first case. With 28 million people dead as a result of COVID-19 and tens of trillions of dollars in damages it simply unacceptable, and franklyunimaginable, that every stone should not be overturned examining what went wrong.

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COVID-19: The Preventable Pandemic - Heritage.org