In Biden Administration internecine warfare news, China-stationed State Department personnel have asked permission to leave the country based on fear of family separation due to China’s draconian COVID regulations. From CNN:

The request has not yet been approved by the State Department, according to the sources, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity.

Apparently, State Department transparency extends only as far as an outsider’s ability to see right through said department’s duplicity. But I digress.

China, where human rights are marked solely by the total absence thereof, has responded to the Pandora’s box it opened — you know, the one stamped MADE IN WUHAN? — with measures so egregious they’ve made Gretchen Whitmer look like Ron DeSantis on a Red Bull bender. Locking people inside their homes and businesses, stuff like that. It is, of course, perfectly understandable why, in fighting COVID’s spread, China is going for the immediate overkill shot in lieu of the medicinal shot, which has proven less effective than a shot in the dark with a starter’s pistol in slowing the spread. Might be a tad embarrassing to have the virus you created continuing to go viral, what with the Olympics coming to town next month.

Snark aside, it is understandable why anxious State Department personnel want the option to get out of Dodge, or Dongguan as the case may be. For some unfathomable reason, most parents prefer the notion of getting away from the children translating into the littles spending a week or two at Kidz Kamp somewhere in Missouri, not a week or two spent spending bribery money to get the kids out of a fiercely guarded foreign isolation ward.

For its part, China is not amused.

“Dirty trick again!” screamed a headline in the Global Times, a state-run nationalist tabloid on Wednesday. “Its purpose is not about concerns over coronavirus but more about making public panic, smear China’s achievements in fighting the pandemic, and disturb the Beijing Winter Olympic Games,” the report said.

Gee, you’d think we’d complained about military provocation of Taiwan or something.

The matter brings up an inconvenient hypocrisy. Since day one of China channeling the late Doug Fieger of The Knack by releasing “My Corona,” governmental overreach in the name of slowing the spread has been standard operational procedure. Now, when there is a threatened table turn, bureaucrats are yelling bloody murder. Those who over the past two years have had being with their loved ones denied, knowing family and friends were suffering and dying alone, probably are not full of sympathy for China-stationed State Department personnel. Can’t say I blame ‘em.