Much of the COVID-19 damage cannot be reversed and will only get worse. States should sue China and hold its rulers accountable. Consider the Colorado toll:

? A growing death count exceeding 500, as of Wednesday

? Thousands fight for their lives in hospitals, as the health care sector struggles to survive

? Permanent ruination of countless businesses and the lives of those who gave savings, blood, sweat, and tears to establish them

? Soaring unemployment and the personal and household devastation that accompanies it

? More than a million children out of brick-and-mortar schools

? Looming state-government deficits amounting to billions of dollars when the poor and unemployed have an unprecedented need for government assistance

? Devastation to the energy sector, which funds a large portion of our local, state and school district services

This is merely a short list of the obvious damage on the surface. It does not account for other factors, such as the exacerbation of mental health problems, the suicide rate, and the loss of revenue needed to bring our crumbling infrastructure into the 21st century. The ripple effect seems to have no end.

We mostly have China to blame for this historic disruption, so Colorado Attorney Gen. Phil Weiser should sue. He could hold accountable the Communist Party, the Chinese government, China’s health ministry, Hubei Province, Wuhan, Wuhan Institute of Virology, and other parties deemed complicit in the spread of the virus.

We reached out to the attorney general on Thursday to ask about a lawsuit. Weiser said he will discuss the option with his staff.

Weiser and his team should remember why he sought this position: to work as the “people’s lawyer.” The people have been harmed by China, and they need Weiser’s help. He has a long history of free-market, small-business advocacy. Nothing has harmed that cause more than China’s recklessness.

Missouri Attorney Gen. Eric Schmitt sued in federal district court against China and a variety of other Chinese parties this week. Mississippi’s AG quickly filed a similar complaint.

The Missouri suit “seeks recovery for the enormous loss of life, human suffering, and economic turmoil experienced by all Missourians…”

Overwhelming evidence leaves little room to contest the willful, wanton, and neglectful manner in which China mishandled the virus when the world community had a chance to contain it in Wuhan. And, no, blaming China is not “racist.” China is not a race. It is among the three most powerful countries on the planet and the most populous.

“The evidence of China’s deliberate cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan is a matter of public record,” says Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Brookings Institute, writing for The Atlantic.

“In suppressing information about the virus, doing little to contain it, and allowing it to spread unchecked in the crucial early days and weeks, the regime imperiled not only its country and its citizens but also the more than 100 nations now facing their own potentially devastating outbreaks. More perniciously, the Chinese government censored and detained those brave doctors and whistleblowers who attempted to sound the alarm and warn their fellow citizens…”

When China’s communist authorities realized what they had unleashed, they exacerbated the crisis by hoarding medical supplies, masks, and other personal protective equipment needed around the globe.

Chinese health officials told the World Health Organization through January the virus could not be spread from one person to another, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. This led the WHO and trusted health officials in developed countries to downplay the severity of the threat all the way through February and into March.

The U.S. government is investigating, as are officials in dozens of other countries. Details about the malicious cover-up and propaganda campaign will continue emerging to support an inevitably long list of lawsuits.

Chinese officials claim sovereign immunity renders them faultless. Not so. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act contains exceptions to government immunity, including 1605(a)(5): “Money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States and caused by the tortious act or omission of that foreign state.”

Injury, death, loss in the United State caused by “tortious act or omission”? That is an easy bar in this case. The Chinese government omitted honest, reasonable, and truthful information in its communication with other countries. Chinese officials would not grant foreign health officials access to study the virus. The country’s general negligence in containing the disease is prima facie “tortious,” as in wrongful and harmful.

No one can guarantee how lawsuits against China will end, but we should pursue them. Make China answer to these charges. Take all possible measures to impose punitive and actual damages. The people’s lawyer should do this for everyone suffering and dying because of China’s willful misdeeds.