Congressmen want to give Americans the right to sue China over COVID-19

Two Congressional Republicans introduced a bill that would give Americans the right to sue the Chinese Communist Party for what they call a “large-scale misrepresentation campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic.” If passed, the bill would waive the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and allow U.S. citizens to sue the Chinese government for monetary damages.

Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said their legislation is aimed at getting access to more information about the pandemic, and providing relief to those who lost loved ones and suffered severe economic hardship.

“The Chinese Communist Party refusal to provide real time information killed Americans,” Burgess said. “The American people lost loved ones and suffered a multitude of losses during the Coronavirus pandemic. They deserve the ability to get answers from the CCP.”

The legislation was introduced after the former head of the CDC testified that he believes the pandemic began because of a lab leak.

“This conclusion is based primarily on the biology of the virus itself. Including the rapid, high infectivity for human to human transmission,” Dr. Robert Redfield said. “As a clinical virologist, I felt it was not scientifically plausible that this virus went from a bat to humans and became one of the most infectious viruses that we have in humans.”

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he still thinks the pandemic began with a natural occurrence. He cited a peer-reviewed paper in Science Magazine that said it likely began with a zoonotic jump from animals to humans.

“There has never been a situation where a virus escaped from a lab, that’s a brand new virus that no one has ever seen before, that led to a pandemic,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN. 

Some of the speculation may be over soon. On Friday, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that would require the Biden administration to declassify intelligence regarding links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill had already been unanimously approved by the Senate. Now, it’s up to President Biden to sign it.