IF OR WHEN? What Happens If The Coronavirus Wuhan Lab Leak Thesis Is True?

The Biden administration would then be under excruciating pressure to adopt an extremely hardline policy toward Beijing. Despite expectations that President Biden would seek to restore a much more cooperative and conciliatory China policy after the tensions in bilateral relations that characterized the Trump years, his actual approach has been akin to “Trump lite.” On issue after issue, from Taiwan, to the South China Sea, to trade, the Biden administration’s posture toward Beijing has been surprisingly firm. Perceptions that covid began in a Chinese virology lab, though, would compel the White House to adopt even stronger, more confrontational, measures. And that process could intensify bilateral tensions to an extremely dangerous level.

Biden’s allies in Congress and the mainstream media likely would find themselves under ferocious attack as well. The earlier attempt to stifle debate and exonerate the PRC government from any responsibility for the onset or spread of covid would be in danger of backfiring spectacularly. Critics might even question whether that campaign was merely an error born of rabid, unthinking hostility toward any position the Trump administration embraced, or whether more nefarious motives—including financial ties to the Chinese government—played a role. The potential for outright neo-McCarthyism on this issue is considerable.

So if it is proven that Communist China set a pandemic loose on the world, by either accident or design, the real danger is that Republicans might pounce?