RFA noted that it could not independently verify that the Chinese Communist Party was burning coronavirus patients alive, nor has the Communist Party confirmed or denied the rumors. Yet the rumors persist that, to make room for new patients in Wuhan’s overcrowded hospitals, medical staff chose older patients less likely to survive the infection and shipped them to incinerators while they were still alive and conscious.

RFA quoted a source “close to the funeral industry” identified only as Ma who said that he had heard reports of “people restrained and forced into body bags when they were still moving.”

“Some people are saying that … there are video clips of screams coming from funeral homes, from inside the furnaces … which tells us that some people were taken to the funeral homes while they were still alive,” Ma added.

Ma also noted the existence of video testimony from an anonymous older woman who had been treated at a Wuhan hospital, presumably for Chinese coronavirus.

“One old lady was saying that they put one guy into … a body bag when he wasn’t even dead yet, and took him off to the crematorium because there was no way of saving him,” Ma told RFA.

Video of an older woman speaking anonymously to a camera began circulating on social media in February in which she said she witnessed a patient next to her at a Wuhan hospital stuffed into a body bag while still alive.

“He’s not dead, his feet and hands are still moving,” the woman says, “[They] wrapped him in a plastic body bag and zipped it up.”

According to New Tang Dynasty, a broadcaster affiliated with the persecuted Chinese Falun Gong movement, the woman spoke with a Wuhan accent, suggesting she was a native of the central Chinese city.

The Taiwanese outlet Taiwan News traced the origin of the video to a Chinese student group called “Youth Production,” who reportedly uploaded the video on February 24. Taiwan News noted that the woman claimed to have suffered from coronavirus symptoms but, as she was in her 60s, she did not suffer severe symptoms, unlike the man taken away, who she estimated was in his 70s.

“She said that the man was weak but was still breathing when medical workers ‘bound his head’ and then his hands and feet, which were ‘still moving,’” Taiwan News reported, noting that she also lamented that the hospital where she received care had no other treatments available for coronavirus patients besides oxygen. In the West, doctors have begun experimenting with several drug mixtures, one of which — a combination of antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat lupus and malaria — has generated optimism in American hospitals.

The woman said she felt older patients at the hospital were treated “like dead dogs.”

Neither Taiwan News nor RFA could independently confirm the reports of Wuhan residents being burned alive.

The Chinese Communist Party claims that, as of Tuesday, it has documented 82,718 cases of coronavirus nationwide and 3,335 deaths across the country. The vast majority of these, 3,212 deaths, were recorded in Hubei province. Wuhan is the capital of Hubei.

Multiple reports citing sources in Wuhan’s seven funeral homes dispute this claim, estimating that the real death toll in the city is as much as ten to forty times higher than China’s official nationwide death toll. Reports of hundreds of bodies cremated in some funeral homes began surfacing in February, at the height of the epidemic in the city. Government officials did not allow residents to pick up the remains of their relatives until late March, however, as the strict lockdown that saw government officials welding Wuhan residents in their homes was still ongoing.

When the funeral homes opened to distributed ashes two weekends ago, witnesses estimated that some funeral homes were distributing as many as 5,000 sets of remains a day. Estimates as to the number of sets of remains distributed last week in Wuhan range from 30,000 to 46,000 people.

“There are suspicions that many people died in their homes without being diagnosed and, at first, there were no kits to do the test,” an unnamed resident said in a report last week. “Nobody in Wuhan believes the official numbers. The real one, only they know.”

Ma, the funeral home source speaking to RFA in its report on Monday, said that Wuhan was cremating so many bodies at some point that some incinerators broke down, resulting in cremators placing multiple bodies in one incinerator at a time to keep up with the sheer amount of remains. The result has been several reported incidents of people receiving urns with ashes featuring items they do not recognize that clearly did not belong to their loved ones.

“A resident of Wuhan’s Jiang’an district surnamed Liu said she had found a man’s belt clasp in the urn she was given, supposedly containing her mother’s ashes,” RFA noted. “And a resident of Hongshan district said he had found the remains of ceramic dental crown, denture or implant in the urn labeled with his father’s name, even though his father had never had such a thing fitted.”

U.S. intelligence officials don’t think the pandemic was caused by deliberate wrongdoing. The outbreak that has now swept the world instead began with a simpler story, albeit one with tragic consequences: The prime suspect is “natural” transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets. But scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.

“Good science, bad safety” is how Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) put this theory in a Feb. 16 tweet. He ranked such a breach (or natural transmission) as more likely than two extreme possibilities: an accidental leak of an “engineered bioweapon” or a “deliberate release.” Cotton’s earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor, back when he first raised it in late January and called the outbreak “worse than Chernobyl.”

President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added to the story last month by describing the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and the “Wuhan virus,” respectively.

China dished wild, irresponsible allegations of its own. On March 12, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao charged in a tweet: “It might be [the] US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.” He retweeted an article that claimed, without evidence, that U.S. troops might have spread the virus when they attended the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019.

China retreated on March 22, when Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai told “Axios on HBO” that such rumors were “crazy” on both sides. A State Department spokesman said Cui’s comment was “welcome,” and Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged in a March 27 phone call to “focus on cooperative behavior,” a senior administration official told me.

To be clear: U.S. intelligence officials think there’s no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn’t engineered by humans and that it originated in bats.

But how did the outbreak occur? Solving this medical mystery is important to prevent future pandemics. What’s increasingly clear is that the initial “origin story” — that the virus was spread by people who ate contaminated animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan — is shaky.

Scientists have identified the culprit as a bat coronavirus, through genetic sequencing; bats weren’t sold at the seafood market, although that market or others could have sold animals that had contact with bats. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market.

There’s a competing theory — of an accidental lab release of bat coronavirus — that scientists have been puzzling about for weeks. Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?

Richard Ebright, a Rutgers microbiologist and biosafety expert, told me in an email that “the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident,” with the virus passing from bat to human, possibly through another animal. But Ebright cautioned that it “also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with, for example, an accidental infection of a laboratory worker.” He noted that bat coronaviruses were studied in Wuhan at Biosafety Level 2, “which provides only minimal protection,” compared with the top BSL-4.

Ebright described a December video from the Wuhan CDC that shows staffers “collecting bat coronaviruses with inadequate [personal protective equipment] and unsafe operational practices.” Separately, I reviewed two Chinese articles, from 2017 and 2019, describing the actions of Wuhan CDC researcher Tian Junhua, who while capturing bats in a cave “forgot to take protective measures” so that “bat urine dripped from the top of his head like raindrops.”

And then there’s the Chinese study that was curiously withdrawn. In February, a site called ResearchGate published a brief article by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao from Guangzhou’s South China University of Technology. “In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories,” the article concluded. Botao Xiao told the Wall Street Journal in February that he had withdrawn the paper because it “was not supported by direct proofs.”

The unidentified victim from Yunnan province died while on a chartered bus heading to his workplace in Shandong province, the state-run Global Times announced in a tweet Monday.

“He was tested positive for #hantavirus. Other 32 people on bus were tested,” the outlet stated, offering no further details.

The suggestion of a new virus starting just as China starts lifting its strict quarantines from COVID-19, which originated in the Asian nation, sparked panic among many on social media, with #hantavirus trending.

However, experts were quick to point out that it is not a new virus — and has only rarely thought to have been passed between humans.

“The #Hantavirus first emerged in 1950s in the American-Korean war in Korea (Hantan river). It spreads from rat/mice if humans ingest their body fluids. Human-human transmission is rare,” Swedish scientist Dr. Sumaiya Shaikh tweeted.

“Please do not panic, unless you plan to eat rats,” she stressed.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said hantavirus is rare — but put the death rate at 38 percent.

Symptoms may occur up to eight weeks “after exposure to fresh urine, droppings, or saliva of infected rodents,” the CDC says, noting it can occasionally also come from bites from infected rats or mice.

The symptoms in many ways mirror those reported from the novel coronavirus — with sufferers reporting fevers, headaches, coughing and shortness of breath.

One patient likened it to “a tight band around my chest and a pillow over my face,” the CDC said.

That is almost identical to what those with COVID-19 have reported, with Rep. Ben McAdams recently saying he “felt like I had a belt around my chest.”

Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome became a “nationally notifiable disease” in the US in 1995, but there have been no known cases transmitted between people, the health group says.

“In Chile and Argentina, rare cases of person-to-person transmission have occurred” in the case of one strand named Andes virus, the CDC says.

“There is no specific treatment, cure, or vaccine for hantavirus infection,” the CDC warned, saying patients often need intensive care to “help them through the period of severe respiratory distress.”

The biologist told the agents that a colleague in China had asked him to deliver the vials to a researcher at a U.S. institute. After examining the vials, however, customs agents came to an alarming conclusion.

“Inspection of the writing on the vials and the stated recipient led inspection personnel to believe the materials contained within the vials may be viable Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) materials,” says an unclassified FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News.

The report, written by the Chemical and Biological Intelligence Unit of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD), does not give the name of the Chinese scientist carrying the suspected SARS and MERS samples, or the intended recipient in the U.S. But the FBI concluded that the incident, and two other cases cited in the report, were part of an alarming pattern.

“The Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate assesses foreign scientific researchers who transport undeclared and undocumented biological materials into the United States in their personal carry-on and/or checked luggage almost certainly present a US biosecurity risk,” reads the report. “The WMDD makes this assessment with high confidence based on liaison reporting with direct access.”

The report, which came out more than two months before the World Health Organization learned of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan that turned out to be COVID-19, appears to be part of a larger FBI concern about China’s involvement with scientific research in the U.S. While the report refers broadly to foreign researchers, all three cases cited involve Chinese nationals.

In the case of the suspected SARS and MERS vials, the intelligence report cites another classified document that is marked “FISA,” meaning it contains information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Another case cited in the report appeared to involve flu strains, and a third was suspected E. coli.

The FBI does not state precisely what sort of biosecurity risk these cases could present, but Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the FBI appears to be concerned with dual-use research that would be used for bioterrorism. And if the illicit samples cited in the report were being brought into the U.S., she says, the traffic is likely to be both ways.

“How do you know what they’re bringing in and out unless you have a comprehensive surveillance point?” she asked. “If it’s going one way, it’s going the other way. You’d be very naive to assume otherwise.”

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, who worked on China issues on the National Security Council under the Trump administration, said “there is a threat” posed by Chinese nationals carrying biological samples but believes it’s “likely the carrier … would be someone who is unwitting,” making it hard to determine the intent. “Some likely could be deliberate, to test our ability to identify and intercept. Others could be opportunistic,” he said.

The FBI report refers to both biosecurity, which typically refers to the intentional misuse of pathogens, such as for bioterrorism, and biosafety, which covers accidental release. The FBI declined to comment on the report.

Concerns about Chinese biosafety are not new. For example, the SARS outbreak in 2003 was followed by several incidents of infections caused by laboratory accidents, including eight cases that resulted from mishandling at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing.

“There have been cases in the past where a variant of some kind of flu pandemic had escaped from a laboratory because of mismanagement,” said Elsa Kania, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

But the problem is not limited to Chinese researchers, even if those cases have been prominent, she continued. “Certainly it is a biosecurity risk when anyone is transporting materials in a manner that is clandestine because … there have been several incidents when this has occurred with researchers of a variety of nationalities.”

Concerns about China’s flouting of biosafety precautions may be long-standing, but the coronavirus pandemic is likely to exacerbate tensions between Beijing and Washington. The outbreak comes amid already rising tensions in U.S.-China relations over issues that range from trade to espionage.

Andrew Weber, who worked during the Obama administration as the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said the relationship with China in the biological sciences has gotten worse in recent years.

“After SARS, when China needed technical help, it had a strong relationship with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. They were transparent, because they realized covering up an outbreak cost them dearly,” said Weber, now a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. “In recent years they’ve tightened up, making international cooperation more difficult.”

In recent weeks, however, these tensions have rapidly boiled over, with President Trump calling COVID-19 “the Chinese Virus,” while Beijing in turn has promoted conspiracy theories claiming the virus originated in a U.S. weapons lab.

Scientists have been adamant that the virus is not a weapon, either from the United States or China. “There’s no basis to suspect it’s a laboratory construct,” says Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University. “It has none of the expected signatures that would be present for deliberate construction.”

However, Ebright doesn’t exclude the possibility that the virus’s spread started from poor biosecurity in China. A leading theory is that the virus jumped from wildlife to humans. Some researchers speculate this happened at a live-animal market where exotic species are sold for food. But Ebright also notes that such wildlife viruses are collected in laboratories, including in Wuhan. “Therefore, it’s also a possibility that this virus entered the human population through accidental infection of a lab worker carrying out field collection, or an accident by a lab worker characterizing the sample in a laboratory,” he said.

Independent of the coronavirus, the FBI’s focus on China’s biosecurity appears to be part of long-standing suspicion in the U.S. government about China’s involvement in the biological sciences. Several recent high-profile Justice Department cases involving the export of sensitive technology have involved Chinese scientists, or persons with alleged ties to the Chinese government.

Most prominently, the Justice Department in January announced charges against Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, for concealing ties to the Chinese government. “It’s a clear-cut case of a conflict of interest, and unfortunately, it’s not an isolated incident,” said FBI special agent Joseph R. Bonavolonta, head of the Boston field office, in announcing the charges.

Lieber, who is free on a $1 million bond, has not yet entered a plea on the charges.

But the FBI’s focus on China and Chinese scientists is also raising concerns among some academics, who fear it smacks of profiling. “I am concerned that the current trend in national security is toward profiling against people of Chinese descent,” said Nicholas Evans, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who specializes in medical ethics. “That’s not only racist, it’s bad practice. FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement attempts at profiling have very often been harmful without making us any safer.”

Evans also questioned the FBI’s focus on scientists hand-carrying biological samples as a unique threat. He pointed to previous examples, like a U.S. lab in Maine that was fined more than a decade ago for importing highly pathogenic avian flu viruses from Saudi Arabia.

“The FBI claims that it is impossible to determine the contents of samples accurately, even if declared under current import laws,” he wrote in an email. “That’s true. But I am skeptical about the degree to which this particular behavior adds significant risks to security given that there are many other ways to get biological organisms into the country.”

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it’s true that China has long had loopholes in its biosafety regulations. “That’s why [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] in February talked about beefing up the legislation for biosafety and biosecurity,” he said.

That history has already encouraged rumors like the idea that the coronavirus originated as a bioweapon.

Now, with relations between China and the U.S. deteriorating, Huang expects collaboration on biological research to grow even more difficult, reversing decades of cooperation. “I often argue that U.S. engagement with China is the most successful in the area of public health,” he said. Such cooperation even survived the difficult period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Now, however, those relations are being set back as hostilities between the two countries grow.

“You could argue, health is borderless, especially when two countries face these common challenges. This would be a time for them to collaborate mostly closely,” he said. “That turned out to not be the case.”

The seven funeral homes serving Wuhan have reportedly been running nonstop recently, prompting one resident to say “anyone with any ability to think” knows officials are lying about the death toll.

China announced 2,535 deaths in Wuhan – the initial epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic – which was locked down for two months.

But some locals believe the number is closer to 50,000.

News website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in just one day.

“It can’t be right … because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told Radio Free Asia.

A resident surnamed Gao said the city’s seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they work around the clock.“Anyone looking at that figure will realise, anyone with any ability to think,” Gao said. “What are they talking about [2,535] people?”

“Seven crematoriums could get through more than that [in a single day].”

Some people estimate 46,800 COVID-19 victims will have been cremated, based on the capacity of the funeral homes.

Buying silence

Residents say city officials have been buying their silence with 3,000 yuan ($685) cash handouts in “funeral allowances” to make sure cremations are completed by the grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5.

“It’s to stop them keening [a traditional expression of grief]; nobody’s allowed to keen after Qing Ming has passed,” Wuhan local Chen Yaohui said.

Another resident, Hu Aizhen, lost his mother to COVID-19 and said nobody in the city believes the official death toll.

“The official number of deaths was 2,500 people … but before the epidemic began, the city’s crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day,” Aizhen said.

“But during the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremating bodies around the clock.”

Stamping out second wave

Mainland China has reported a drop in new coronavirus cases for the fourth consecutive day as Beijing seeks to stamp out the risk of a second wave of infections by shutting its borders to foreign travellers and cutting international flights.

The National Health Commission said on Monday that 31 new coronavirus cases were recorded on Sunday, including one locally transmitted infection, dropping from 45 cases a day earlier.

Four new deaths were reported, taking the cumulative, reported death toll in the mainland to 3304, from 81,470 infections.

The number of new infections has fallen sharply in the mainland from the peak in February.

Reopen for business

The government is now exhorting businesses and factories to reopen for business as it rolls out various stimulus to drive a recovery from what many now expect to be an outright economic contraction in January-March.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said the government would adjust support policies for small and medium-sized firms promptly as the situation developed to protect them from the impact of the coronavirus.

Chinese firms should actively resume operations and production even as coronavirus prevention efforts continue, Xi also said during a Sunday visit to Ningbo, a major port city in eastern Zhejiang province, according to state media.

No new Hubei cases

Hubei province, where the coronavirus outbreak first emerged in late 2019, “reported” no new cases for the sixth consecutive day on Sunday after the province of 60 million people lifted its traffic restrictions and resumed some domestic flights.

Beijing remains worried about the risk of a second wave of the epidemic triggered by cases involving travellers coming to China who were infected overseas.

The virus has now spread globally, infecting hundreds of thousands outside China’s borders.

China has barred foreigners from entering the country and ordered airlines to slash the number of international flights into the country.

The vast majority of the so-called imported cases reported to date have been Chinese nationals, many of whom are students.

As families in the central Chinese city began picking up the cremated ashes of those who have died from the virus this week, photos began circulating on social media and local media outlets showing vast numbers of urns at Wuhan funeral homes.

China has reported 3,299 coronavirus-related deaths, with most taking place in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global pandemic. But one funeral home received two shipments of 5,000 urns over the course of two days, according to the Chinese media outlet Caixin.

It’s not clear how many of the urns were filled.

Workers at several funeral parlors declined to provide any details to Bloomberg as to how many urns were waiting to be collected, saying they either did not know or were not authorized to share the number.

The photos surfaced after both the United States and Italy have reported significantly more cases and than China. Italy has reported just shy of three times the fatalities.

Analysts like Gordon Chang question why the Western world would believe Beijing since the country has been accused of multiple cover-ups and spreading misinformation that may have accelerated COVID-19, which, as of Wednesday, had infected more than 428,400 people and killed 19,120 globally.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party have touted China’s dip in new coronavirus cases, claiming that any pop-ups of the virus are “imported.”

“For China, the truth has always been a casualty,” Chang told Fox News.

He added that Beijing’s high-stakes campaign to get its people back to work and show the world that China, under the leadership of Xi and the ruling Communist Party, has beaten the coronavirus, is a dangerous, if not deadly, game.

“It’s inevitable that China will have another outbreak and it will be serious,” Chang said. “Xi has been trying to get China back to work since the first week in February. He has these ambitions of China dominating the world… and he is willing to make sure it happens at the great cost of other people’s lives.”

Since the coronavirus hit, China’s economy has been in tatters. Its services and manufacturing sectors have taken huge hits and its consumer confidence has dipped to an all-time low. Spinning positive news is a powerful way China can start to claw its way back from being seen as a global pariah responsible for the outbreak to an international hero ready to save the day.

However, he said forcing its citizens back to work before the virus is fully contained would be akin to playing Russian roulette.

“My parents and brother live in Beijing and they are scared,” Sara Sheng, who goes to graduate school in Virginia, told Fox News. “They are being told one thing but their instincts are telling them another.”

Hong Kong, once on the front lines of the war against COVID-19, thought it was in the clear last week when a relatively small number of cases were reported. The city jumped at the good news, signaling to the world that its early actions – wearing masks, social distancing and intensive hand-washing – were working. Of its 7.5 million people, Hong Kong reported only 150 cases at the beginning of March, as numbers around the world spiked. But the breakthrough for the metropolis was short-lived and the new lesson out of Hong Kong is to not celebrate beating the coronavirus too early.

As the territory began opening its borders and allowing residents who were stranded in other parts of the world back in, its number of cases suddenly doubled.

On Monday, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said all non-residents would be barred by Wednesday.

The coronavirus whiplash felt in Hong Kong is also playing out in other parts of Asia including Singapore and Taiwan.

But Chang believes Hong Kong’s cautionary tale might not mean much Xi, who is hellbent on projecting his country as indestructible.

“It’s either reckless disregard of people’s life or he knows what’s occurring and pushing forward anyway,” he said, adding that Xi believes the dominance of the Communist Party is above all else.

“Generally countries like China have sovereign immunity and governments cannot be brought to regular courts or held liable regardless of their conduct,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israel-based attorney who has long specialized in suing terrorist regimes and state sponsors who orchestrate human rights abuses on behalf of victims, told Fox News.

“However, an argument could be made that just like support for terrorism, which is legally actionable, a government that engages in such reckless disregard and negligence and covers up an epidemic which has the potential to spread worldwide could be held legally liable ,” Darshan-Leitner said. “Cover-ups and deliberate acts to conceal a deadly medical crisis are not [among] the protected acts of a sovereign state or of responsible leaders.”

According to Darshan-Leitner, if a private party like a hospital or health care worker of a chemical company had learned of a dangerous and highly contagious disease and then deliberately covered its existence up and concealed it from the public they would clearly face criminal and civil liability.

“Why should a local or national government be any different? Clearly, China signed treaties and had a duty under international law to report the virus and not cover it up,” she continued. “China is not to blame for creating the virus but for not sounding the international alarm and trying to conceal it from the world.”

The lawsuits are already starting.

On Thursday, Florida’s The Berman Law Group filed a class-action lawsuit against the People’s Republic of China (PRC), alleging that the government’s failure to report the disease and subsequently move to quickly contain it created a “giant Petri dish.”

“The PRC and the other defendants knew that COVID-19 was dangerous and capable of causing a pandemic, yet slowly acted, proverbially put their head in the sand, and/or covered it up for their own economic self-interest,” the complaint states. “The defendants’ conduct has caused and will continue to cause personal injuries and deaths, as well as other damages.”

A study released this month by the U.K.’s University of South Hampton indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the geographic proliferation of the pathogen would have been significantly smaller, and the number of cases would be reduced by 95 percent.

According to a timeline compiled this week by Axios, it was Dec. 10 that the country’s first known patient started contending with strange symptoms.

Six days later, health officials in Wuhan made a connection between the unique condition – resistant to common flu medications – and a wildlife market in the city. On Dec. 27, authorities were told about the new virus, and three days later, two doctors in Wuhan were reprimanded by the Communist Party for spreading information about the SARS-like contagion in a WeChat group..

Later, an announcement was made that authorities had seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus,” which was repeated by the World Health Organization (WHO), even as cases outside China’s border slowly started being identified.

The following day, the first known U.S. case from Wuhan arrived.

On Jan. 18, a massive Lunar New Year banquet was permitted to take place in Wuhan, in which tens of thousands of people gathered and potentially spread the virus exponentially. And as the disease spiraled beyond control over the ensuing days, the city – and three others – were put on lockdown, even as other regions continued to celebrate the New Year in large groups over the proceeding few days.

However, a slew of other voices have said that reports were made about the novel virus several weeks before that, but effectively silenced. The Sunday Times of London also reported that several genomics companies tested samples from ill patients in Wuhan late last year, and alerted the Chinese government to their findings on Jan. 3, only to be given gag orders.

Some reports have also underscored that the government was aware of the virus as early as November. According to the South China Morning Post, the first case was recorded on November 17 in Hubei province, with five new cases reported on average per day in the weeks thereafter.

Juliya Arbisman, an international disputes expert and partner at the New York-based Diamond McCarthy law firm, indicated that there are broad possibilities under international law, especially trade law, for State-to-State and individual investor claims against countries.

“These might boil down to the ability of preexisting legal mechanisms to deal with these sorts of modern questions,” she said. “There is also a pretty clear case for countries insisting on China to honor its obligations under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) to stop people from trading in and eating endangered species, which is likely how Covid-19 infected humans in the first place.”

It is believed coronavirus was born out of a seafood wholesale market in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan, whereby poorly regulated, live-animal markets mixed in with illicit wildlife trade, creating the environment for viruses to morph from animal hosts into the human populous.

U.S. National Security advisor Robert O’Brien, referring to the doctors who were censored, has claimed that the Beijing concealment in the early phase “cost the world community two months” and aggravated the international fallout. Moreover, the leading Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, has termed it “one of the worst cover-ups in human history.”

“The International Health Regulations (IHR) are rules that should prevent domestic public health emergencies from becoming international problems. This global health law requires member states to notify the WHO of events that may constitute ‘a public health emergency of international concern,'” concurred Ivana Stradner, international law and national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “China’s delay in reporting the outbreak violated international law.”

From her lens, states can sue China before international tribunals for violating its obligation to report the coronavirus outbreak under the IHR.

“Chinese behavior is a threat to global security and constitutes a violation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which authorizes the U.N. Security Council to take action to ‘maintain or restore international peace and security,'” Stradner continued. “States, and the U.S. in particular, can react to the coronavirus outbreak by invoking the principle of self-defense.”

And David Matas, a Canada-based international human rights, refugee and immigration lawyer who was appointed as a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, emphasized that China, as a State Party, is additionally subject to the Biological Weapons Convention.

“The Convention states in Article I that each state party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to retain microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes,” he said. “In my view, non-reporting is a form of retention in violation of the Convention. The United States is also a state party to the treaty. If the U.S. found China acted in breach of its obligations deriving from the provisions of the Convention by its delay in reporting the coronavirus, the U.S. could lodge a complaint with the Security Council.”

Chinese leaders have embarked on a fervent campaign to place blame elsewhere – even going so far as to insinuate the virus was brought to Wuhan by the U.S. military.

Requests by the United States and other global bodies to investigate the origins of the deadly outbreak in China have thus far been dismissed by Beijing, who have staunchly denied any wrongdoing or mishandling of the outbreak.

Darshan-Leitner further stressed that in her view, it is “a massive breach of duty and customary international law,” and that a case could potentially be made in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if it is proven that a cover-up was perpetuated by high-level individuals.

“The ICJ was created as a forum for countries which believe they have been grievously injured and have causes of action against other states to be able to seek redress. This would be a classic case of the reckless actions of one government impacting and severely harming nations around the world,” she explained. “The problem is China would have to agree to have the case heard by the ICJ, and with so much loss of life, so many trillions of dollars in damage and the global economic destruction the coronavirus caused Beijing would never agree to have a case heard there.”

Titus Nichols, a federal attorney, and professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, contended that, under international custom, foreign governments are immune to lawsuits from citizens. However, individual families could potentially bring a lawsuit against the Chinese government under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA).

“The act is the primary means for bringing a lawsuit against a foreign sovereign or its agencies and instrumentalities,” he said.

But even if families were successful, and financial compensation was ordered, claiming the money from China would be a steep challenge.

“Suing a government for mishandling something like the coronavirus is not likely to be a winning lawsuit in just about any country in the world,” surmised Dan Harris, the founder of the international law firm, Harris Bricken, affirming that payment collections regardless would be tough. “The Chinese government does not have much in the way of assets outside China and courts there are not going to let you pursue China government assets in China. Chinese state-owned companies have assets outside China, but most countries count that differently.”

Moreover, the issue of who and who isn’t at fault for the exacerbation of the coronavirus is still up for debate.

“There is evidence that China took steps to prevent knowledge about the virus from being shared,” Nichols added. “However, China cannot be held accountable for the actions of Americans who refuse to take heed of the government and continue to spread the virus.”

China’s strategy to fight COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, though later praised by the World Health Organization and scientists worldwide, consisted of cover-ups, lies, and repression. It also failed miserably, exposing the world to this deadly sickness.

After claiming yesterday to have no new cases of the virus, China is now trying to take a victory lap, emphasizing the strength of its response—and the United States’ apparent failures—while spreading conspiracies that the U.S. government manufactured the virus. And while U.S. President Donald Trump’s sluggishness toward the outbreak merits criticism, China’s endangering of the world with its initial incompetence is certainly more to blame. Some of Trump’s fiercest public critics, however, have in their condemnations of the president remarkably ignored China’s faults or even praised the Chinese Communist Party’s response. In doing so, they are propagating falsehoods—and Chinese propaganda.

The details of China’s critical missteps are long-running and have been widely reported. When academics in 2007 and 2019 warned that a SARS-like virus could emerge from China’s wet markets, the CCP allowed these markets to stay open.

A February Washington Post analysis of Chinese statements, leaked accounts, and interviews with public health officials and medical experts concluded that China’s “bureaucratic culture that prioritizes political stability over all else probably allowed the virus to spread farther and faster.”

A March study by researchers at the U.K.’s University of Southampton showed that if China had acted three weeks earlier than it did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95 percent and its geographic spread limited significantly.

Wuhan health officials by the end of December had confirmed nearly three dozen cases of the virus and closed a market they thought was related to its spread. And yet Chinese authorities spent January denying the virus could spread between humans—something doctors had known was happening since December—and allowed a Lunar New Year banquet involving tens of thousands of families to take place in Wuhan as planned. The Chinese government later let some 5 million people leave the city without screening.

Remarkably, according to even the CCP’s own account, Xi knew about the virus for two weeks before saying anything to the public. The CCP’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, mentioned the epidemic and Xi’s actions to fight it for the first time only on Jan. 21—the same day the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first coronavirus case in the United States.

China’s failure to contain the virus can be explained by the divergence between the country’s modernized public health system and its outdated autocratic political structures. The ills of the draconian latter negated the potential benefits of the former, allowing the virus to spread from Wuhan to Thailand and South Korea and beyond.

Trust for Xi’s regime is now waning within China and across the public health world. Some global leaders are increasingly doubting the reliability of China’s data and the usefulness of its guidance on combating the virus, but others, like Italy’s foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, continue to praise Chinese assistance.

Seemingly hoping to preempt any potential loss of foreign trust, China’s propagandists have gone into overdrive, spectacularizing their country’s purported altruism and leadership: The Chinese Embassy in Italy, in a statement laden with South China Sea–related propaganda, claimed to be “donating” ventilators and sending experts to that country; journalists reported that China is sending similar “aid” to Spain; Chinese experts have carried out training sessions for 10 Pacific Island countries and dispatched medical experts, along with supplies of masks and virus detection kits, to Iran and Iraq.

This is all part of Xi’s wide-scale propaganda effort to gaslight the world into believing that China is not only not responsible for but is responding best to the pandemic, ultimately portraying his country as a magnanimous and trustworthy global leader.

But many of China’s claims are easily refuted. China did not stop the virus from spreading; Beijing’s negligence allowed the outbreak to go global. China is not donating but selling ventilators, face masks, and other goods to Italy and Spain. According to Italian media, an array of other European countries are also planning to purchase ventilators from China.

Xi’s regime, even amid a crisis it enabled, is just applying the same simple economic strategy as it does through the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s Marshall Plan–like state-backed global investment and marketing campaign: exporting domestic overcapacity abroad. China, home to too many unemployed workers and industrial firms, generally sends both to the global south through the initiative.

And now, as the world—thanks to Chinese state failure—gasps for air, China is there to sell us its excess ventilators and face masks. These sales will both serve as fodder for propaganda and help the country rejuvenate its shellshocked business sector.

While China charges the world for its assistance, it is, in fact, Trump’s United States that has already provided up to $100 million of aid to China and other countries affected by the pandemic.

And yet, despite all of this, more than a few Western thought leaders have aped Chinese falsehoods to critique Trump’s apparent failures and praise Xi’s purported successes.

Rachel Maddow on her show hosted New York Times reporter Donald McNeil, who opined that China had “enormous success in beating down its epidemic.” Maddow then thanked McNeil for detailing the “distance between” China’s response and “what we’re preparing for.” Her show, highlighting Trump’s failures compared with China’s supposed victories, later shared a clip of the segment on Twitter with the headline “How coronavirus testing works in a country that takes the problem seriously.”

Maybe she should move to China?

Why it matters: A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.

This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China’s cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.

Dec. 10: Wei Guixian, one of the earliest known coronavirus patients, starts feeling ill.

Dec. 16: Patient admitted to Wuhan Central Hospital with infection in both lungs but resistant to anti-flu drugs. Staff later learned he worked at a wildlife market connected to the outbreak.

Dec. 27: Wuhan health officials are told that a new coronavirus is causing the illness.

Dec. 30:

• Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts information on WeChat about the new virus. She was reprimanded for doing so and told not to spread information about it.
• Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang also shares information on WeChat about the new SARS-like virus. He is called in for questioning shortly afterward.
• Wuhan health commission notifies hospitals of a “pneumonia of unclear cause” and orders them to report any related information.

Dec. 31:

• Wuhan health officials confirm 27 cases of illness and close a market they think is related to the virus’ spread.
• China tells the World Health Organization’s China office about the cases of an unknown illness.

Jan. 1: Wuhan Public Security Bureau brings in for questioning eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat.

Jan. 2: Chinese researchers map the new coronavirus’ complete genetic information. This information is not made public until Jan. 9.

Jan. 7: Xi Jinping becomes involved in the response.

Jan. 9: China announces it has mapped the coronavirus genome.

Jan. 11–17: Important prescheduled CCP meeting held in Wuhan. During that time, the Wuhan Health Commission insists there are no new cases.

Jan. 13: First coronavirus case reported in Thailand, the first known case outside China.

Jan. 15: The patient who becomes the first confirmed U.S. case leaves Wuhan and arrives in the U.S., carrying the coronavirus.

Jan. 18:

• The Wuhan Health Commission announces four new cases.
• Annual Wuhan Lunar New Year banquet. Tens of thousands of people gathered for a potluck.
• Jan. 19: Beijing sends epidemiologists to Wuhan.

Jan. 20:

• The first case announced in South Korea.
• Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese doctor who is helping to coordinate the coronavirus response, announces the virus can be passed between people.

Jan. 21:

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the first coronavirus case in the United States.
• CCP flagship newspaper People’s Daily mentions the coronavirus epidemic and Xi’s actions to fight it for the first time.
• China’s top political commission in charge of law and order warns that “anyone who deliberately delays and hides the reporting of [virus] cases out of his or her own self-interest will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity.”
• Jan. 23: Wuhan and three other cities are put on lockdown. Right around this time, approximately 5 million people leave the city without being screened for the illness.

Jan. 24–30: China celebrates the Lunar New Year holiday. Hundreds of millions of people are in transit around the country as they visit relatives.

Jan. 24: China extends the lockdown to cover 36 million people and starts to rapidly build a new hospital in Wuhan. From this point, very strict measures continue to be implemented around the country for the rest of the epidemic.

The bottom line: China is now trying to create a narrative that it’s an example of how to handle this crisis when in fact its early actions led to the virus spreading around the globe.