Subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks as FAA Acting Administrator Daniel Elwell, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt, and DOT I.G. Calvin Scovel appear before a Senate Transportation subcommittee hearing on commercial airline safety, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, March 27, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

As I noted over the weekend, the mainstream media rushed to report last week that the United States had passed China and Italy on the number of confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus.

Their reports became even more animated when the number reached over 100,000. Here are some examples of headlines on both stories:

–USA Today: U.S. passes Italy, China as nation with the most confirmed cases of COVID-19

–NY Times: The U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

–WaPo: Coronavirus death toll in U.S. reaches 1,000 as number of confirmed cases passes China

–CNN: US coronavirus cases reach more than 101,000 as reported deaths hit new daily high

–CNN: US has more known cases of coronavirus than any other country

That the mainstream media have been so quick to uncritically accept China’s Wuhan coronavirus numbers as factual even in the face of convincing evidence that they’ve lied about them has been an immense source of frustration for Republican politicians who are determined to get the truth out even as supposedly “reputable” news outlets look the other way.

For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted this out Sunday:

Some in our media can’t contain their glee & delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China Beyond being grotesque,its bad journalism We have NO IDEA how many cases China really has but without any doubt its significantly more than why they admit to — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 29, 2020

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) retweeted Rubio, and added his own take on the issue:

It’s even worse. We KNOW China is lying. On 3/1, China had 80,026 reported cases. On 3/28, it had 81,439. Does anyone believe this highly contagious virus just stopped in China on 3/1, right as it became a pandemic worldwide? And American media (for $$) willingly repeat the lies. https://t.co/GovCf3G825 — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 29, 2020

Over the weekend, I read arguments on various social media feeds from Trump administration critics who argued in so many words that even “if” China was lying about their Wuhan coronavirus statistics that it didn’t “absolve” the United States of their supposed failures at combating the virus. Just look at our numbers they said. They speak for themselves.

The problem with this argument is that alleged U.S. shortcomings on the Wuhan coronavirus threat are largely based on accepting China’s “official” numbers as the gospel truth. China is being used as a “model” to show how to effectively combat the virus.

China has a substantially higher population (1.4 billion people) than the United States (330 million), and yet their number of cases have hovered around the 83,000 mark, whereas ours currently stands at around 143,000. So per capita, it makes the United States response look much worse.

Though any confirmed case is sad, and any coronavirus death is a tragedy, in terms of the per capita rate (scroll) of confirmed cases, the United States is in better shape than most countries with a large amount of cases, including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Iran.

And, very likely, China. If only their true numbers were known.

If the media want to dunk on the number of cases we have in America on their own merit, that’s one thing. But it’s deceitful and dangerous to hold up China as a model in contrast to the U.S. when it comes to showing how to effectively combat the virus. There’s much we don’t know, much China’s government is deliberately not telling us.

Frankly, the MSM should know better than to hold up China as a model to follow, but since they’ve been operating for over three years now under the “Orange Man Bad” premise, I guess we shouldn’t expect any better out of them.