Apologies are scarce these days and, evidently, China can’t spare one for its role in unleashing the coronavirus pandemic upon the world. Instead of regrets, the Asian authoritarians have issued plans to build a new string of bio labs. China’s doubling down on the kind of bioscience that may have leaked the deadly virus is dreadful news. Strengthened legal protections provided by a new biosecurity law have reportedly opened the way for China to intensify its study of infectious diseases. Planned are 88 biosafety level-3 laboratories and, ominously, three level-4 labs ― featuring the same biocontainment protocols suspected of failing to control the COVID-19 virus that has killed more than 3 million worldwide. Proof of the deadly virus’ origin remains inconclusive, but China’s refusal to allow World Health Organization investigators open access to the Wuhan virology laboratory near COVID-19 ground zero strongly suggests a cover-up. Suspicion has its place, and there is every reason to be wary of a nation that refuses to shed light on its role in spreading human suffering, whether inadvertently or otherwise. China poses a stiff challenge. The coronavirus has claimed more American lives than World War I, World War II and the Korean War combined. Whether death was unleashed by accident or intent, Beijing has demonstrated little regret. Perhaps mindful of the adage that “the best defense is a good offense,” China is instead doubling down on potentially virulent bioscience. Mr. Biden must not fall down on the job of safeguarding Americans from the next pandemic.

Despite Dr. Shi’s reported remarks and the other evidence pointing to WIV as the creator of COVID-19, China still insists that it isn’t responsible for creating the virus and that it was created by the U.S. military or was naturally passed from animals to humans. A recent scientific paper, authored by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sorensen and published by a British newspaper, claims that the COVID-19 virus was created by the WIV and then re-engineered to a form that could have been transmitted to humans by bats. Possibly as a result of that paper, British intelligence agencies are reportedly reassessing their earlier discounting of the possibility of a leak of COVID-19 from WIV. Far more important, and nearly conclusive, are the work done by Dr. Shi’s team and her remarks upon discovery of the disease. She knew that her work could have created the COVID-19 virus and that it could have been leaked. WIV leaked the SARS virus twice in 2004. According to former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb, such leaks happen “all the time,” even in the U.S. There is virtually nothing that the Chinese will say - or have said - about COVID-19 that we can believe. They have underreported the COVID-19 cases and the deaths of Chinese citizens. Their insistence that the virus was a natural occurrence and was passed from animals - probably bats - to humans is, at this point, pretty far-fetched. To admit that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is working, to develop pathogens that can be used as weapons would be a clear admission of violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.

Of the reactions to the outbreak of disease caused by the COVID-19 virus, then-president Donald Trump’s is certainly the best known and that of Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) the least. In mid-March 2020, Mr. Trump began calling the disease the “Chinese flu,” for which he was called a racist (among other things). Two months later, when he said that there was strong evidence that the virus had been released from WIV, the media ridiculed the idea. According to a Scientific American article published in June 2020, Dr. Shi received a call from her boss, on Dec. 30, 2019 in which he directed her to examine samples received from the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It had detected a novel coronavirus in some patients and wanted WIV to help determine what it was. If coronaviruses were the cause of the disease, the article quotes Dr. Shi as having recalled thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” (Dr. Shi, probably under instructions from her political boss, later claimed the coronaviruses were not from WIV.) Dr. Shi had, for years, been engaged in what virologists call “gain of function” research which manipulates the composition of viruses to discover, for example, how to make them resistant to vaccines and thus deadlier to humans. We don’t know whether Dr. Shi created the COVID-19 virus or whether it was released, accidentally or not, by WIV. The reason we don’t know is that China - with the help of the World Health Organization - has been stonewalling any serious investigation of WIV.

Among voters the idea gaining traction is that it is better to assist the working poor by offering higher paying employment opportunities than through enhanced government benefits financed with increased taxes on more affluent Americans. In places like San Francisco and Seattle economic studies documented that abruptly raising the minimum wage caused significant restaurant closures and job losses. And dramatic shifts disturb wage patterns for workers further up the wage ladder - for example, it’s tough to raise the pay of a counter clerk at McDonald’s $2 an hour without also raising the pay of the shift manager too. In low wages markets, raising McDonald’s starting pay for servers to $15 an hour would increase labor costs about $8 - including add-ons for payroll taxes and unemployment insurance-and increase the cost of a quarter-pound hamburger meal from about $6 to $8. Take out restaurants, drug stores and groceries in cities where minimum wages have been set high are increasingly relying on computer-assisted check out to save on labor costs. Overall, higher wages favor e-commerce over brick-and-mortar, because fulfillment centers more readily lend to automation. And those favor large businesses-at the expense of smaller and stand-alone consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues-because they can spread development costs for robotic solutions, software and websites over higher volumes and more outlets. A $15 minimum wage would cut family incomes by about $9 billion, and some 1.3 million low wage workers would lose their jobs and suffer tragic losses of independence, dignity and income altogether.

President Biden wants to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, but this is hardly the best way to lessen income inequality. Poverty in America and conditions for the working poor are not nearly as extreme as progressives advertise. Measures of inequality ― such as those in Census reports ― often focus on earned income and pensions but fail to consider progressive taxation, welfare benefits and other private transfers. For 2017, former Sen. Phil Gramm and former Bureau of Labor Statistics Assistant Commissioner John Early estimated the impact of government programs such as food stamps, Medicaid and rent subsidies and contributions from private charities. Those raised average household income for the bottom quintile from about $4,908 to $45,389 ― nearly double the poverty line for a family of four. That’s why the working poor own cell phones with family subscriptions that cost a substantial portion of their earned income. Whereas growing up in working-class community on Long Island in the 1950s, I frequently observed poorer mothers using the pay phone at the corner grocery because they could not afford a landline. In 1938, Congress established the federal minimum wage and has periodically raised it to accommodate inflation. In 2009, it was set at $7.25 per hour. Conservative economists don’t like governments fixing prices above what market forces would require, because it wastes resources ― too much milk from dairy price supports and unemployment for the minimum wage. But for low wage workers, the damage is already done ― gradually raising the minimum wage in line with other wages would likely cause minimal new job losses.

In 2019, a series of patents for the United States Navy was made public. The technology in the patents represent a quantum leap in military technology. As one credible report indicates, not only did the Navy file these patents but a working prototype was produced. What is clear is that the technology in the patents, if they were ever encountered by unsuspecting people in the real world, would likely appear to be UFOs. Or, in the Pentagon’s preferred parlance, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” (UAP). But isn’t it strange that the most compelling UAP encounters in decades were all experienced by members of the Navy, the very same branch that has been developing the exotic, next-generation technology as described in the patents above? While we cannot rule out extraterrestrials, we also have to explore more terrestrial ― more probable ― answers to our investigation. That leaves the possibility that what’s being encountered are highly advanced, secretive military technologies. If that is the case, then it either belongs to the U.S. military or the technology belongs to China or Russia. Many believe that some of the earliest UFO sightings near Area 51 were, in fact, early prototypes of the stealth plane. Beyond that, there are countless other exotic military technologies in development that could easily be mistaken for UFOs today but will, over time, become mainstream weapons in America’s arsenal of democracy. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that either China or Russia, two highly advanced nations with an incentive for outpacing the Americans technologically, would be developing some new, highly se cretive, advanced technology designed to check American power. Whatever the explanation behind UAPs may be, we cannot ignore this.

Once COVID-19 has passed, America must immediately examine our war against it. The cost in deaths and dollars demands that we learn from our successes and not repeat our mistakes. COVID’s costs have been staggering. As of April 15, America has had more than 32 million cases, almost one-tenth of the population, and 578,000 deaths. In less than a year fighting the virus, the federal government spent $5.5 trillion, increasing the federal debt by 32%. In comparison, during America’s direct involvement in Vietnam from 1964 through 1972, the federal debt increased just 25%. To these known costs must be added the unknown. These include the health problems. They also include economic losses, lost opportunities and lost schooling. And they must also include lost freedom; essentially over a year of people’s lives has been transformed to an extent unimaginable outside of conscription. It is therefore incumbent that we quickly evaluate the response’s efficiency relative to the high cost we know exists. This is important because our COVID response will become the precedent for any future broad health response. It is critical that any future response be the right one. Simply allowing our broad swath of policy responses to go into history as being inevitable and unimprovable is more than wrong. It is dangerous. Of all government policies, lockdowns undoubtedly had the most direct effect on people’s lives and the economy. They also inflicted an extremely high cost. Considering lockdowns’ unprecedented nature, their duration, stringency and targeting must be evaluated.

There will be hand-wringing about the damage to science’s credibility. This damage is a good thing. Scientists, their theories, their models and their conclusions should have no more credibility than they deserve. Of more concern is the degradation of science by the twisted incentives of politics, funding and tribalism. Federal money is at the heart of the WIV COVID-19 story. That February 2020 Lancet letter was drafted and circulated by the EcoHealth Alliance. Funded by Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the alliance actually paid for gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the WIV. Five of the letter’s signers are affiliated with the alliance. Why has this not been common knowledge? Because the COVID-origin story had already become completely politicized early in 2020. This and the intertwined funding and research turned the lab-origin story into professional kryptonite. Nicholas Wade states the problem this way, “Government research funds are distributed on the advice of committees of scientific experts drawn from universities. Anyone who rocks the boat by raising awkward political issues runs the risk that their grant will not be renewed and their research career will be ended.” The political control of funding, the coordinated personal attacks, the ridicule of dissenting research and opinions gets transmogrified into a scientific consensus. The media and the public buy into it. Honorable or not, scientists are subject to the same self-interest biases as other humans. It would help if reporters recognized this simple truth.

Science can fool you, so can the anointed science experts. Last year, media outlets ridiculed anyone who suggested the COVID-19 pandemic started with a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Daniel Funke at PoliFact asserted, “Research shows that the virus’ genetic makeup precludes it from being man-made,” and “Scientists believe bats are the source of the novel coronavirus and that it jumped to an intermediate host before spreading to humans….” The New York Times published many pieces dismissive of the lab-leak theory, including one headlined, “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.” Jack Brewster at Forbes wrote the lab-origin theory was, “an explosive claim pitting scientists, who remain skeptical of the claim, against Trump administration officials …” None of the authors appeared to have any special training or professional focus on epidemiology or virology that would justify the certainty with which they dismissed the WIV as the source of the virus. Instead, the journalists’ certainty came from the authority of others. The Lancet, published a letter signed by 27 scientists affirming that studies “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” The review of the then month-old literature on the SARS-CoV-2 virus by 27 scientists may have ended the discussion for a year, but now it is back. A bombshell article by Nicholas Wade in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists restarted the lab-origin discussion. The once dismissive press is back-pedaling at warp speed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 3.5 million individuals worldwide. Attention is shifting from solely saving lives to retracing the trail of death to its source. Avoiding future calamity means responsible parties must be held to account. China, where the coronavirus inarguably originated, has made it clear that an apology is not forthcoming. As if the lack of Chinese contrition isn’t maddening enough, Beijing has stated that it will no longer cooperate with any investigation into the virus’ origin. However, China cannot force the world to unlearn what it already knows. U.S. intelligence agencies have identified a virus strain studied in the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a possible “backbone for the creation of a pathogenic chimeric virus,” pointing to an experimental rather than a natural cause. No amount of silencing will alter the truth. As facts come into focus, China is meeting criticism with belligerence. The Chinese Communist Party’s semi-official Global Times recently declared the nation must be prepared for an “intense showdown” with the U.S.: “The number of China’s nuclear warheads must reach the quantity that makes U.S. elites shiver should they entertain the idea of engaging in a military confrontation with China.” In other words, Americans angered by China’s affronts must be frightened into silence. With characteristic bluntness, former President Trump has issued a statement calling for financial compensation: “China should pay $10 trillion to America, and the World, for the death and destruction they have caused!” If this pandemic proves to be the result of a leaky lab, China must open its checkbook.