In a lengthy piece about the responsibility for the impact of the coronavirus on the world, a professor of international maritime law at the U.S. Naval War College surmises that the United States should make China make full reparations for the damage wrought by the virus.
James Kraska, the chair and Charles H. Stockton professor of international maritime law in the Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College, starts his essay by noting that after the novel coronavirus “incubated in Wuhan from mid-December to mid-January, the Chinese state made evidently intentional misrepresentations to its people concerning the outbreak, providing false assurances to the population preceding the approach of the Lunar New Year celebrations on Jan. 25.”
Kraska notes that the initial outbreak likely came from workers and customers of the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in mid-December, and on Dec. 26, Chinese news outlets released reports of an anonymous laboratory technician who said the virus was 87 percent similar to SARS. That was followed by Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, who publicized the news in an online chatroom on Dec. 30.
Kraska cites Wuhan public health authorities leaving out Li’s discussion about SARS or a novel coronavirus. He delineates how Li and other medical professionals were shut down from publicizing what was really going on. He writes, “On Dec. 31, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission falsely stated that there was no human-to-human transmission of the disease, which it described as a seasonal flu that was ‘preventable and controllable,” adding, “On Feb. 1, the New York Times reported that “the government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.” – READ MORE
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