Unsatisfied simply condemning the public for using the term “China virus,” the media are now rejoicing in America’s rising infection rate. The New York Times wrote that the United States apparently leads the world in coronavirus cases, an argument echoed by NBC, CNN, and the Guardian, among others.

Writers, celebrities, and politicians have responded to this news with unconcealed glee: Julia Ioffe of GQ magazine tweeted: “Who’s the shithole country now?” Hillary Clinton quipped that Trump “did promise ‘America First,’” and the Verge published a despicable article stating that “the coronavirus is now the American virus” — which, so far, has not spurred anguished cries of "racism" from the media.

The only problem in these statements is that they assume that China is being truthful when it says its coronavirus cases have plateaued at around 80,000. It’s curious that the same media that fact-check the president every time he stubs his toe or makes a joke are willing to accept without any skepticism statistics from a communist regime that not only lies habitually but has recently lied about this very issue.

The mainland Chinese government lied in January when it said there were no human-to-human transmissions of the virus. It silenced whistleblowers who tried to warn the world about the incipient pandemic. It ordered the destruction of research samples in early January in order to prevent evidence of an epidemic from becoming public. And now, its officials even spread outrageous theories that the U.S. Army started the outbreak in Wuhan.

The Chinese Communist Party knew about the virus as early as last December, yet instead of fighting to contain its spread, it did everything possible to censor news of the outbreak. It took Beijing until mid-January of this year to cut off travel from Wuhan, during which time potentially untold millions of people exposed to the virus in and around Wuhan had traveled abroad.

Had China acted earlier to stop the virus instead of stopping people from reporting on it, the pandemic could have been limited by 95%, according to one study. And so, because of the lies of the communist authorities, millions of people all over the world are getting infected, dying, losing their jobs, and being forced to live for weeks in quarantine.

This shameful and criminal conduct, which should have drawn international opprobrium down upon China's Communist Party, instead attracted only praise. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, lauded China’s “cooperation” and obsequiously stated that he was “impressed with the detail and depth of China’s presentation.” Here in the U.S., leftist publications are declaring that the U.S. must “catch up” to China’s standards and incessantly condemn anyone who uses the term “China virus.”

But why would anyone think that the same regime that lied about the outbreak of the virus, tried to cover it up, and spread misinformation and conspiracy theories would now suddenly decide to publish true statistics?

Considering the virus’s exponential growth, it is absurd to think that China has somehow miraculously stopped the pandemic’s spread throughout the country, much less in Wuhan. Indeed, the word out of Wuhan is that the government's current claims are lies that underestimate the number of deaths by an entire order of magnitude.

The communist authorities have not learned a thing. They did not have a sudden change of heart and decide to repent of their incompetent and brutal suppression of news of the virus. This same evil, duplicitous regime is mainly concerned with sanitizing its image. Sadly, American liberals in the media are indulging them.

It will forever be a disgrace to the liberal media that they were more interested in grandstanding against Trump than in fighting to uncover the truth from an authoritarian regime that actively works to suppress it.

Elad Vaida is a writer in Washington, D.C. He is also a government relations senior associate for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which does not necessarily endorse his views.