Let Lawyers Hunt for Covid s Origin – WSJ

Will we ever know where Covid-19 came from? Not if the last word comes from the U.S. intelligence community, which reported to the White House this week that China s fault is plausible but unprovable. Beijing has refused to cooperate with inquiries, which it has characterized as origin tracing terrorism. The Chinese Foreign Ministry even denounced the equivocal intelligence report: If they want to baselessly accuse China, so they better be prepared to accept the counterattack from China.

For the rest of the world, getting to the bottom of the question is essential to assigning blame and preventing pandemics. Fortunately, we have an institution dedicated to getting to the bottom of thorny factual disputes: the U.S. judicial system. Our judiciary is respected globally for its impartiality and scrupulous adherence to due process. Civil discovery gives litigants the tools to compel production of evidence, backed by the threat of sanctions or even default judgment, so Beijing would be unable to stonewall. With so many losses caused by the pandemic, U.S. litigants have a powerful incentive to bring cases, prosecute them aggressively, and test liability through adversarial presentation. Several such cases have already been filed.

via www.wsj.com

There’s an idea.