Reprinted with permission from Alternet

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was forced to kick off the week by explaining toFox News reporter Peter Doocy how international investigations work. Doocy asked why the U.S. government didn't just bypass the World Health Organization (WHO) and ram through a separate investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus that has killed about 600,000 Americans.

Fox News has spent more than a year minimizing COVID-19, its dangers, the ways individuals can protect themselves and others from the deadly virus, mocked – if not slandered – those who are working to do just that, and then fear-mongered around the coronavirus vaccine.

"I think you're misunderstanding how this process actually works," Psaki had to tell Doocy. "First of all, we need access to the underlying data and information in order to have that investigation."

China and the WHO have refused to be sufficiently transparent.

"With 589,920 dead Americans, at what point is President Biden [going to] say, we don't want to wait for the WHO? We don't know what they're doing," Doocy demanded, trying to make foreign policy from a seat in the White House press briefing room. "This needs to be an American led effort to get to the bottom of what happened?"

Doocy went on to try to mock President Joe Biden, saying that "he talks all the time about how he's known President Xi for a long time. So why can't he just call?"

"Why isn't President Biden pushing for more access more information to get to the bottom of exactly what happened?" he also asked.

"We are," Psaki replied, "and we have repeatedly called for the WHO to support an expert driven evaluation of the pandemic's origins, that is free from interference or polarization."

"An international investigation," she also said, "led by the World Health Organization is something that we've actually been pressing for, for several months, in coordination with a range of partners around the world. We need that data. We need that information from the Chinese government, what we can't do and what I would caution anyone doing is leaping ahead of an actual international process. We don't have enough data and information to jump to a conclusion at this point in time."

"So," Doocy, whose network has worked around the clock to attack those concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, asked, "is there any amount of casualties from COVID in this country that would make you want to not wait for an international effort and just do it?"

Psaki refused to allow him to bully the American people.

"Well, I have to say, I think the family members of the loved ones whose lives have been lost deserve accurate information, data, not the jumping to a conclusion without having the information necessary to conclude what the origins are, what we do share. Everyone in this country has a desire to know how this started, where it started and prevent it from ever happening again. That's something we all share."

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