A US$20 trillion lawsuit has been filed in the US against the Chinese government, seeking compensation for damages caused by the new coronavirus outbreak.
A group of US citizens and businesses filed the lawsuit at a federal district court in the state of Florida on March 12.
The plaintiffs argue that they are suffering huge damages resulting from the Chinese government’s mishandling of the outbreak.
A spokesperson at the Berman Law Group representing the plaintiffs says the suit was brought by about 1,000 plaintiffs from across the US, including individuals infected with the virus and large companies severely affected by the outbreak.
The spokesperson said one of factors behind the lawsuit were remarks by a Chinese foreign ministry official who said the coronavirus could have been brought into China by the US military.
Similar class action lawsuits have been filed in the states of Texas and Nevada against the Chinese government as the coronavirus continues to spread across the country.
However, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) prevents Americans from suing other countries except under specific exceptions. Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter, however, argued in a Bloomberg column that the Florida suit’s claims don’t fall under the FSIA exceptions.
Speaking at a news conference at the White House on Sunday, President Donald Trump conceded the deaths in the United States from coronavirus could reach 100,000 or more.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, the origin of virus has been widely discussed online, and conspiracy theories around it have also emerged endlessly.
Previous scientific studies have already suggested that virus, which causes COVID-19, originated through natural processes.
Some analysts say there is increasing evidence that the global coronavirus pandemic is a US biological warfare against other nations.
Iranian scientists and intelligence experts are examining the possibility of the coronavirus being a biological warfare waged against the Iranian people.
n a recent interview with ABC news, Dr. Robert Garry, a professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, pointed out that it’s a misconception to believe the virus originated at a seafood market in Wuhan, China.
“Our analyses, and others too, point to an earlier origin than that,” Garry said, “There were definitely cases there, but that wasn’t the origin of the virus.”
According to Garry, the pandemic may be triggered by the mutation in surface proteins of the virus. But it’s also possible that a less severe version of the illness was circulating through the population for years, perhaps even decades, before escalating to this point.
