cyprus-mail.com By Alper Ali Riza
Public health like national security is a legitimate aim of the state. If necessary and proportionate it can override freedom of movement and association and all the other human rights normally associated with liberal democracy, free enterprise and the capitalist economy â but only up to a point!
Oftentimes governments get away with using public health to claw back human rights but that is because usually individuals are as concerned about their health as government.
Under EU law too freedom of movement within the EU can be curtailed on public health grounds if the disease in respect of which public health is invoked has epidemic potential as defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Covid-19 always had epidemic potential in both scale and speed of transmission, which is why suspicion is now growing that WHO may have been slow to call China to account and failed to prioritise the containment of Covid-19 within China as its paramount concern.
Given Chinaâs previous lapses with flu viruses you would think that out of an abundance of caution WHO would have been on the case as soon as the first infections came to light in Wuhan in late 2019 to nip the new virus at inception.
Not for nothing was the virus named Covid-19, the diseaseâs official name. It stands for coronavirus disease 2019 because it began that year although crucially the month is not given. Was it November or December? We have a right to know and WHO must be transparent about what was known, when and by whom.
I wrote a piece in the Sunday Mail under the rubric âCoronavirus: vigilance must not falterâ in early February 2020 which was based on information accessed in January 2020. So WHO must have known much earlier. Yet no steps were taken to prevent human-to-human transmission to the rest of the world until the genie was well out of the bottle.
The catastrophic escape of the virus from China is bound to come before a court of law sooner or later when the source of Covid-19 and all the circumstances in which it spread worldwide will be argued in public.
The Australian government, seemingly with American support, has already called for an inquiry but this requires the consent of China, which will not be forthcoming, as she feels hounded by president Trump who many believe, is scapegoating China to cover up his dereliction of duty to protect America from all threats, the viral variety included.
Under English private law, if something dangerous escapes from your land you are liable for the harm or damage it causes even if the escape occurred without negligence on your part.
But it would be difficult to extend the application of this principle against China in international law because it would open the floodgates to claims amounting to astronomical figures that international forums would be reluctant to entertain as a matter of legal policy.
In national domestic law, however, it would depend on the state immunity laws of nations across the world and the availability of Chinese assets within their jurisdictions to satisfy successful claimants.
In the UK, foreign states are, with a few exceptions, immune from civil claims in non-contractual liability cases unless they submit to the jurisdiction voluntarily.
China is unlikely to submit to any jurisdiction in the UK or elsewhere. Her case is that epidemics happen, and that WHO was notified in good time. And furthermore most countries allowed free travel to and from China knowing the facts about Covid-19.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is astonishing that the western economies and your G7s and G20s all failed to see such an obvious existential threat.
MI6, the CIA and the EUâs Intelligence Centre all failed to spot the pandemic potential of Covid-19 and its ability to close down the world economy.
The EU was caught napping when the outbreak occurred. It was unable to act supra nationally in support of Italy and Spain that struggled alone for a while. Now it has to pick up the pieces and show the kind of solidarity a united Europe is supposed to exemplify.
Britain was caught sleepwalking out of Europe as the virus struck, shattering all the positive assumptions on which leaving the EU (Brexit) was based â small wonder Nigel Farage has not been seen or heard of since the crisis broke.
How on earth is Britain going to trade outside the EU in a world in which China may be in the dock, airplanes are grounded, the stock market is down and the country is in lockdown? And if the latest US figures are anything to go by, America may be heading for 1930s-type depression.
