Will he, won't he

You are paying me back (Joel 3:4) 

From the beginning of this crisis, one question has been gnawing away at me. When will Trump sue China? I've been looking at his pronouncements and wondering if any are the early stages of a legal process against the PRC. When he called it the 'Chinese virus', I waited eagerly for the next stage but it never came. But legal action is the American way. Just look at the damages made against BP after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I'm not belittling the destruction or loss of life but 18.7 billion dollars? That is definitely paying the nation back. So even without knowing it will happen, I think it is reasonable to ask if there could be any grounds for suing China over the outbreak.

To my aid came a wonderful programme on BBC World Service called The Food Chain: Should China ban wet markets? It seems the term 'wet market' is not one used in China and for the most part they are very much like our farmers' markets, with one very important distinction: live animals are slaughtered at the point of purchase. Until SARS this included chicken, but this is largely banned. Today it is mostly fish. Note though that important word: largely. The slaughter of hens is not universally banned, and in some markets all kinds of living animals are bought and sold for domestic consumption. The market in Wuhan where the first cases originated was, as you can guess, one of these. It seems that it allowed both live bats and live pangolins to be sold for food.

One great mystery about COVID-19 is its DNA. As far as I understand it is 4% different in the human contractable form to its original genotype. This may not seem much but humans and chimpanzees are only 2% different. The change is huge and should take decades of close interaction and positive environmental pressure to happen. In normal circumstances it should never happen. Something about the environment of this market allowed a massive change in DNA beyond all reasonable expectation. And it's not the first time something similar has happened.

So the answer to the BBC World Service question is to my mind pretty obvious. No, China shouldn't put a blanket ban on wet markets, as wet just refers to the need to wash down vegetables. They should immediately and without question ban the sale of live animals for food direct to the public and, even more forcefully, ban the sale of internationally protected species like the pangolin for food or medicine. A widespread deafness to the suffering of animals is not obvious grounds for a legal action, but that doesn't mean Trump won't enact one. 

And today's news suggests he may intend to do so, but for a very different reason. Trump has just sent a four page letter to the WHO denouncing China, not for its complicity in the appearance of the virus, but for its failure to disclose the severity of the virus in the early days of the outbreak (U.S.-China Feud Over Coronavirus Erupts at World Health Assembly - NYT). It seems China knew and didn't tell, preferring to use the time to buy up the world supply of PPE. Trump's attempt to suggest the disease was grown in a lab in China muddies the waters somewhat, as no expert in the field has found any evidence to support this view, but this all suggests he is gearing up to something. So the answer to my question is: soon.

A path through the woods