The coronavirus — Wuhan Flu, China Virus, or COVID-19 as it is officially called — is known to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, located in the Hubei province, itself in the heart of mainland China. Speculation as to the novel coronavirus’s origin has focused primarily on two places: 1. a popular food market known for selling exotic meat; and 2. China’s only high-security bio-research lab that is known to study coronaviruses and that just happens to be located in Wuhan.

During initial news reports of the virus outbreak, it was widely reported that the virus’s origin was tied to the consumption of exotic meats such as bats. However, the rapidity in which the Chinese government was able to isolate and map the genetic sequence of this coronavirus sparked speculation that it was in fact a known entity the Chinese were studying in their bio lab and that it somehow escaped via an infected worker or lab animal.

If the latter explanation is indeed the true origin of the COVID-19 outbreak, then it’s understandable why the ChiComs would want to cover it up. It would explain why Beijing, after now seemingly having gained control of the outbreak ravaging Hubei, has begun a disinformation campaign, going so far as to have the state-run media blame the U.S. military for releasing the virus in China.

In fact, reports have surfaced claiming that Beijing was aware of the coronavirus well before it became an epidemic and sought to silence that information. According to The Times (of London), “Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed.” Worse, the Chinese knew about the coronavirus for weeks before it became a problem, but they chose to hide that information from the world.

As White House National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien observed, “This outbreak in Wuhan was a cover-up.” In fact, Chinese doctors who sought to get the information out were subsequently imprisoned or silenced by Beijing. O'Brien further noted, “It probably cost the world community two months to respond, and those two months … could have dramatically curtailed what happened in China and what is now happening across the world.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) blasted the ChiComs for blaming the U.S.: “[It’s a] shameless new chapter in China’s cynical campaign to control its own image. America has worked to assist all countries — China very much included — suffering from this pandemic.” He added, “But we cannot stand by as Beijing’s lies result in economic decline and in lives threatened across the world.”

Back in China, Beijing has begun revoking press credentials and expelling journalists working for U.S. news outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Furthermore, China has unleashed an army of online bots on social-media platforms to spread its false propaganda campaign that the U.S. is responsible for initiating the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking of unleashing armies, however, The Wall Street Journal reported the inconvenient truth: The Chinese government “let some five million people leave Wuhan without screening.”

Chinese intelligence has also been caught attempting to hack the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services database. It’s clear that the Chinese communist government still has a chokehold on the nation and is ratcheting up its disinformation war in an effort to prevent the truth from getting out to both its own people and the rest of the world. And now China is threatening to restrict critical drug shipments to the U.S. — a weakness in our system that we’ve highlighted previously.

In the meantime, much of the mainstream media is more than willing to pump out the ridiculous and demonstrably false assertion that China’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent pandemic puts U.S. efforts to shame. Of course, this has everything to do with the fact that President Donald Trump is in office. Leftmedia talkingheads are so averse to offering any positive coverage of Trump that they’ll spew communist propaganda so long as it makes Trump look incompetent. Typifying the degree to which the Leftmedia will bow to China is its absurd assertion that Trump’s reference to COVID-19 as “foreign” or “Chinese” is emblematic of racism. In truth, if Trump had actually handled the situation the same way Beijing has, most of these Leftmedia journalists would be sitting in a cell for failing to spout his praise.

(Edited.)