Volunteers from the Blue Sky Rescue team disinfect at the Qintai Grand Theaters in Wuhan, the epicentre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, April 2, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

I’ve seen a lot of grumbling by journalists who hang around the White House that the president is not being straight with them, that the briefings are a circus, that campaign dynamics supersede science, etc. Maybe. So why don’t they get out there and do some reporting on what really matters? There’s a gigantic story going on in China. No one has cracked the secrets of what Xi Jinping has been up to in his massive coverup. Why doesn’t everyone go work on prying the story out of China? Go undercover, if necessary! Sure, this is risky, but political reporters are always bragging about being risk-takers. Danger is already their middle name, isn’t it?


So spending the next year digging up information about how the Wuhan coronavirus got started, the extent of the Chinese Communist Party coverup, why the Party insisted until January 20 that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, etc. is what reporters should be up to. Niall Ferguson has a list of pertinent questions for the Chinese that are way more important than the question of whether President Trump is too optimistic or talks too much or has a blustery manner or has 99 bucks riding on hydroxychloroquine. This is the biggest story of official mendacity causing a public-health crisis since Chernobyl. It’s the center of the biggest story on the planet.

If nothing Trump says is of any interest anyway, why spend the entire day snarking about him? The story is elsewhere. Pack up that house in Chevy Chase and go to where the real story is.