Other examples. The numerous cases over alleged climate-change damages. And the U.K. being challenged at the World Trade Organization by 15 other nations for compensation due to delaying its Brexit process.

Many claims have been successfully made by groups against the United States, such as the Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, and by victims of forced sterilization. Reparations are currently being sought for descendants of African-American slaves.

So, however difficult it may be, should China one day be made to take responsibility for any negligence over COVID-19?

It is not that the communist state doesn’t have the resources, and the way that numerous national economies are currently hemorrhaging money, those governments may be left with little option than to ask China for compensation, rather than loans.

However, it was not alone in initially playing down the threat of the virus. On March 4, a World Health Organization (WHO) official, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, stated, “We are eight weeks into this outbreak.” Does the WHO really believe it only began on Jan. 8?

The WHO has also consistently advised against travel or trade restrictions on China, and member countries are supposed to heed that guidance.

Singapore defied it early on. Italy and America followed later, but by then Chinese New Year had happened, so many Chinese would have already returned from visiting their homeland.

Taiwan, which isn’t in the WHO, enforced its flight ban days before that major holiday, whereas the U.K. applied those WHO travel rules and allowing flights in from China, Italy and Iran.