ST. LOUIS, MO – This past week, a federal judge in Missouri ruled China concealed knowledge of the emergence of the coronavirus during the early days of the pandemic, using the extra time to stockpile protective equipment, according to the Washington Post.
The Post reported Missouri won the case in a default judgment of more than $24 billion after the Chinese agencies “failed to appear or otherwise answer after being properly served,” according to the ruling from Judge Stephen Limbaugh, Jr., of the Eastern District of Missouri.
Chinese representatives refused to respond to a federal lawsuit and it is unclear whether the state will see the penalty paid out, reported the Washington Post.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri), first sued China in April of 2020 over its “appalling campaign of deceit, concealment, misfeasance, and inaction” that he claimed had, “unleashed the virus,” explained the Washington Post.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) stated that the state will collect “every penny” from the judgment by “seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland,” reported the Washington Post, adding the AG suggested it may work with the Trump administration to help identify and seize Chinese assets.
The Post reported the Chinese Embassy said that it would not recognize the judgment and would “firmly take reciprocal countermeasures according to international law” if its interests are impacted.
Prosecutors submitted evidence that included a purported statement from a Chinese professor at Wuhan University who said he “had knowledge of an individual with covid-19 in September 2019, and reports from the U.S. State Department that it had reason to believe several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick with covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019,” wrote the Washington Post.
Around this time, the lawsuit alleged, the Chinese province where Wuhan is located began “purchasing more pathogen detection equipment, both in total contract value and number of contracts.”
In his ruling, Limbaugh wrote, “according to frontline doctors, by November 2019 the rate of illness in Wuhan was so high that government officials were cancelling classes in some high schools,” and “by November 2019 (and certainly December 2019), local Chinese officials recognized the dangers of human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus to a sufficient degree that they were taking affirmative steps to limit gatherings of people,” noted Washington Post.
The lawsuit accused China of using that forewarning to carry out an “aggressive campaign to hoard and monopolize personal protective equipment, such as face masks and medical devices (and) China took control of U.S. factories inside the country and prevented the exportation of equipment to the U.S.,” reported the Washington Post.
A Congressional Research Service report from December of 2020 stated China’s actions “may have denied the United States and other countries that depend on open and free markets for their health care supply chains timely access to critical medical supplies,” wrote The Washington Post.
In January and February of 2020, China imported more than 16 times as many medical masks as usual from the U.S. alone while misrepresenting its knowledge about the scope and spread of the coronavirus, added the Washington Post.
Limbaugh’s ruling concluded that the evidence submitted by the Missouri attorney general was “satisfactory to prove its points” since China did not appear or defend itself in court, wrote the Post.
