In recent years, there have been several attempts to place full or partial blame for the pandemic on the Chinese government. For example, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) wrote:
China lied and people died The bill, enacted last year, would “prohibit the use of Federal funds for any program, project, or activity in the People’s Republic of China until amounts provided for COVID-19 relief in the United States have been repaid, and for other purposes.”
Like Nehls’ bill, most efforts to make Beijing pay for its misdeeds have stalled or failed altogether. But not all is hopeless, according to the Heritage Foundation’s bipartisan Commission on China and COVID-19.
The committee, chaired by former Director of National Intelligence and Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe,
report On Monday, the Chinese government outlined ways to assess the cost of the pandemic and hold China accountable for its role in influencing the impact of COVID-19.
The report noted that while other countries, organizations and individuals may have contributed to the pandemic, “China has stood unique in its active and aggressive opposition to honesty, transparency and accountability regarding the virus and its spread.”
“This action by the Chinese government was, above all, the direct origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the report added.
cover up
The Heritage Commission report highlighted both the intent and impact of the Chinese government’s cover-up of the spread of COVID-19.
“Chinese authorities had seven weeks in which they could have demonstrated good faith and upheld their international commitments to prevent a domestic epidemic from becoming a global pandemic,” the report said. “They consistently chose not to do so.”
Blaze News previously detailed how Chinese authorities delayed warning the world about the COVID-19 emergency and silenced those who tried to sound the alarm.
Although the virus appears to have begun spreading by the fall of 2019 at the latest, Communist Party officials did not alert the World Health Organization until December 31, 2019.
He then claimed“This disease is preventable and controllable.”
The Heritage report said that even though China did eventually provide information to the WHO, it “contained critical information”, including the type of virus causing the disease, the actual number of infected people and knowledge of human-to-human transmission.
A Five Eyes intelligence document in May 2020 accused the Chinese government of “attacks on international transparency” and “putting other countries at risk.”
report New York Post.
Intelligence documents show that Chinese authorities rushed to cover up the virus and evidence of its origins, “destroying” lab samples, censoring evidence of its spread, and refusing requests from other countries to provide samples.
In addition to destroying lab evidence, the Heritage Commission noted that Chinese authorities prohibited researchers and scientists, particularly those associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from sharing information about viruses their colleagues may have developed.
While lying to the world about the virus, the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence agency noted, “The Chinese government deliberately concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the international community in early January while stockpiling medical supplies by increasing imports and reducing exports.”
Not only did China deceive the world and exploit that deception, but they also shut down domestic travel while allowing infected Chinese citizens to travel internationally.
according to According to the New York Times, 175,000 people left Wuhan on January 1, 2020 alone. A total of 7 million people left the city that month, before travel restrictions were imposed, and thousands of them became infected.
According to the Heritage Commission report, there were 1,300 direct flights from Wuhan to 17 U.S. cities before the U.S. government imposed travel restrictions on January 31, 2021, a measure imposed by China and the WHO. Recommendation Regarding.
cost
The committee noted that as of last month, more than 1.1 million Americans were estimated to have died from the foreign-born virus. COVID-19 has claimed roughly 28 million lives worldwide.
As well as filling morgues and leaving empty seats at dinner tables across the country, the report said the pandemic has pushed some 97 million people into poverty worldwide, reducing global GDP by several percentage points, causing unemployment to soar, pushing billions of children out of the classroom and causing educational delays, and negatively impacting the mental health of vulnerable groups.
“The Chinese government must be held accountable for its role in obfuscating the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The report highlighted that in the US, the pandemic has left not only broken hearts and stunted children, but also an economic burden.
The Heritage Commission estimated that as of December 2023, the total cost of the pandemic in the United States exceeded $18 trillion.
Deaths accounted for more than $8.6 trillion of the total cost, lost income accounted for $1.82 trillion of the total, chronic diseases $6.02 trillion, mental health issues $1.98 trillion, and education losses nearly $500 billion.
Retribution
The Heritage Commission found that “the Chinese government and its affiliated entities can and should be held liable for harm caused to the United States and its people by China’s negligence or misconduct related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
But the report said that to hold China accountable, lawmakers would need to amend the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to eliminate “foreign sovereign immunity in the extraordinary circumstances of a foreign-caused global pandemic that has led to the deaths of more than one million US citizens and residents.”
Because the FSIA has been amended to make it impossible to hold China liable for damages, the Commission suggested several causes of action may be available, including negligence, strict liability for unusually dangerous activities, public nuisance, anti-competitive conduct, fraudulent misrepresentation, and civil Organized Crime Punishment Act violations.
In addition to targeting China in general, the committee suggested two Chinese airlines subject to US jurisdiction – China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines – could also be targeted, along with Chinese personal protective equipment makers and the China National Pharmaceutical Group.
But the committee made it clear that there are other ways to skin a cat.
The committee made several recommendations, including:
- Congress should establish a reparations task force to cover claims against China and explore ways to expand the jurisdiction of U.S. federal courts to hold Chinese individuals and entities liable for U.S. civil claims.
- Congress should pass former Republican Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher’s biosecurity bill and “begin to decouple U.S. government and commercial supply chains from Chinese government-backed companies.”
- Congress should pass legislation requiring an audit of all U.S. funding of biomedical and other research activities in China, where the working presumption is that all research should be halted “unless the relevant sponsor can demonstrate that the research project is overwhelmingly in the public interest and poses an extremely low risk of harm.”
- The President should impose sanctions on Chinese officials and entities involved in the concealment and early spread of the virus and seriously address the threat of gain-of-function research.
- The President should block American investment in China’s biotechnology sector.
- The President should pressure the WHO to hold China accountable for violating Articles 6 and 7 of the International Health Regulations.
The report said that if US leaders do not act, the Chinese Communist Party will “continue its opaque, uncooperative and even hostile behavior.”
“The Chinese government must be held accountable for its role in obfuscating the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused more than 1 million deaths in the United States and $18 trillion in economic damage,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.
“While governments and much of the media are focused on legitimate concerns about the origins of the virus, we are also [Chinese Communist Party’s] “Regardless of how COVID-19 emerged, a lack of transparency and distortion of the facts fueled the global pandemic,” Ratcliffe added.
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