A Department of Homeland Security analysis has concluded that China hid the early spread of the coronavirus so it could hoard medical equipment, keeping it from other countries that would have bought it if they had known of the danger that was coming their way from Wuhan.

Specifically, DHS found, with 95% statistical confidence, that changes to China’s personal protective equipment import and export behavior were highly abnormal and not random.

Early warnings from China about the scale of the coronavirus outbreak and its threat of becoming a pandemic could have given other countries time to take actions that would have saved lives. It looks like the Chinese government deliberately misled the world so that it could stockpile crucial supplies.

China’s lies are piling up rapidly. It lied about the virus being capable of transmission between humans. It threw whistleblower doctors in prison. It refused to let the World Health Organization and other authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention see early data. The tyranny continues to restrict international scientific access to Wuhan, and it sells faulty coronavirus tests, masks, and protective equipment across the globe.

The Trump administration should redouble its work with allies to lay bare the true extent of China’s willful negligence in jeopardizing global health. Nearly 70,000 people in this country have been killed by this virus, with many times that number suffering horribly from the disease even though they have survived it. Tens of millions of people have lost their jobs. And the U.S. is not alone.

This suffering is the shame of Chinese President Xi Jinping. We do not believe the virus is a manufactured bioweapon gone wrong or that China deliberately let it leak from its probable source, a research lab in Wuhan. But it did deliberately deceive the world and did deliberately let the virus infect the rest of the world, either as the primary aim or secondary result of disgraceful policy decisions. We, by which we mean the rest of the world, are all in this against communist China’s regime.

The U.S. government’s commitment to righteous truth must go beyond words. Beijing is dedicated to concealing whatever it can still hide about its coronavirus malfeasance.

Considering China’s treatment of millions of innocent Uighurs, we are confident the regime will silence officials who can testify to the Wuhan laboratory being the source of this outbreak or to any truth that makes China’s regime look bad. While the laboratory has not yet been proven as the virus’ original human-to-human transmission source, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has offered increasing confidence that the U.S. intelligence community believes it to be so.

The Trump administration should offer safe haven, immunity, and generous financial compensation to Chinese whistleblowers.

Second, President Donald Trump should pledge to share coronavirus breakthroughs with the world as soon as feasible and that pharmaceutical companies will not be able to charge excessive export prices. Such a commitment would go a long way to consolidating America’s alliances and international standing.

Third, we encourage news media to dig for the facts. It has been disappointing to see less effort devoted to establishing how this virus became a global calamity and more to excoriating administration officials who blame China. Media irresponsibility and reflexive animosity toward the Trump administration make it possible, unfortunately, that we will lose context about what happened and why.