The surgeon general, Vice Admiral Jerome Adams, announced on Sunday that this week would be our Pearl Harbor or 9/11 moment in dealing with the coronavirus. But if that is the case, wouldn’t we at least deal with China in 2020 the same way we immediately dealt with the cause of the Japanese invasion and the terrorist hijackers after 1941 and 2001 respectively?

While we are confined to our homes, it appears that 40,000 people have come here from China since the supposed shutoff. It’s unclear how many were Americans or Chinese nationals and from which parts of China they came, but according to the New York Times, they included “other authorized travelers,” and many came in with “spotty screening.”

The Times reports that since New Year’s Eve, 430,000 people have arrived in the U.S. on direct flights from China. All but 40,000 came in before the shutoff on February 2. ABC News reports that if you go back as far as when the virus is now known to have surfaced, not when our government officially became aware of it, that number is as high as 760,000. According to the NYT, thousands of them came directly from Wuhan.

The bulk of the passengers, who were of multiple nationalities, arrived in January, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit. Thousands of them flew directly from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, as American public health officials were only beginning to assess the risks to the United States.

New York and Detroit have especially been hot spots for the coronavirus outbreak.

Sens. Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley called for a shutoff much earlier in January, as did yours truly, which could have prevented more of the spread.

It’s truly shocking how some of the same liberals pushing for an indefinite suspension of the Bill of Rights and long-term home confinement for Americans to this day won’t support a shutoff in the future and indeed opposed a shutoff when it would have mattered.

Which brings us to the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the question our government will not ask: When did COVID-19 really start in the U.S., and how pervasive was it from December until March?

The “experts” can’t have it both ways. If this virus spreads like wildfire, as they are constantly warning, then it is utterly impossible that it did not spread at least as early as January, with so many Chinese and American travelers coming directly from China, including from Wuhan.

“Nineteen flights departed Wuhan in January for New York or San Francisco — and the flights were largely full, according to VariFlight,” reports the Times. “For about 4,000 travelers, there was no enhanced screening.”

Even after the shutoff, according to the Times, “about 60 percent of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not American citizens.” This means that, after initially bringing in the virus a month or two earlier, we kept reloading the gun to reinforce the spread throughout the country leading into March.

This doesn’t even begin to account for all those who came from China with stopover flights in places like Tokyo or Vancouver. As the Times reports, many passengers the paper spoke to made it clear there was no mandatory exam or quarantine, just advisories and questioning.

Thus, the same people who failed us miserably and refused to shut off travel from China, which is not a civil right, now have the nerve to tell us we must shut down the entire country and quarantine after they have long spread the virus everywhere beyond the ability of quarantines to help. It’s like bailing water from a sinking boat while continuing to enlarge the hole!

Nowhere is this more evident than in Queens, New York. Why does Queens account for more deaths per capita than anywhere in the country – nearly 10 percent of the national total? Well, it has many Chinese immigrants, some of whom the New York times documented as recently having traveled back from China in January.

Julie Kelly of American Greatness chronicles how some zip codes in Queens are seeing a 60 percent positive rate in coronavirus testing, with Elmhurst Hospital taking the brunt of the patients, given its proximity to Chinatown. Obviously, the population density aggravates the spread, but there is no doubt that the initial outbreak was brought in through travel from China that should have been shut off by our government. On February 9, Chinatown held a massive lunar new year celebration, with people jammed shoulder to shoulder in the streets of Queens. The local politicians, serving at the altar of political correctness, sought to allay fears of any public health concerns.

Weeks after brave Chinese doctors risked their lives to warn the world of the calamity in Wuhan, this was the attitude of New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot, knowing that thousands flew in directly from Wuhan for the new year and new college semester. “The importance of events like this is to share with New Yorkers the reality that there is some things that we know, some things we don’t know and we are still learning,” Dr. Barbot said. “The risk for New Yorkers of the coronavirus is low, and our preparedness as a city is very high. While it is understandable that people feel anxious, that is no way shape or form an excuse for them to use that as an opportunity to spread misinformation, to spread racist ideas because that is currently the greatest risk to New Yorkers.”

Those of us who believe a complete lockdown is counterproductive in all ways are accused of not caring enough about lives. Yet long after I had called for getting serious on coronavirus, Rep. Nydia Velazquez encouraged people to attend the packed Chinese lunar new year celebrations.

“I expect that more consumers will walk through the doors like nothing is happening, because really nothing is happening,” she said. Now she has contracted the virus herself. I wish her a full and speedy recovery.

Thus, the very people who helped import the virus and then spent two months blithely carrying on with large packed events are now lecturing us on the need to shut down even small businesses that follow CDC guidelines. Don’t worry, it’s all backed up by science.