Majority of Humanity Say We Are Not Alone in the Universe

A survey in 24 countries published on the occasion of The Last Jedi Star Wars movie

Since the early days of humanity people are fascinated by the mysteries of the universe and the possibility of life on other planets. Space opera movies such as Star Wars, Star Trek and Avatar are immensely popular and Star Wars is one of the highest grossing films of all time. Early this year NASA announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting a star in the constellation of Aquarius. These worlds are possibly warm enough for water sustaining life. Now the worldwide Glocalities survey reveals that the majority of people around the world believe in the existence of life on other planets. The survey results are released at the eve of the new Star Wars saga ‘’The Last Jedi’’.

The research results went viral after the publication of the news article "Are Earthlings alone?" by Reuters.

The Glocalities study on the existence of alien life was completed among 26,492 people from 24 countries (see appendix for details) and reveals that:

61% of people believe that there is some form of life on other planets. 17% rule this out and only 22% say that they don’t know.

47% of people believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations in the universe. 26% rule this out and 28% say that they don’t know.

25% believe that the first form of life on earth arrived here from another place in the universe. 39% do not believe this and 36% say they don’t know.

Of the 47% people who believe that advanced alien civilizations exists, 60% say that humans should try to get in contact with these civilizations. 21% say that we should not try and seek contact and 19% say that they don’t know.

People who believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations have a typical values profile:

They are highly interested in science and have faith in technological progress

They are open minded, tolerant, value freedom and have an anti-authoritarian mindset

They are holistic thinkers who believe that all things and phenomena are interconnected

They believe that our dreams and imaginations create the reality we live in

They are interested in politics and plea for political transparency

Martijn Lampert, Research Director Glocalities says:

"People who believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations are not a marginal minority, but constitute a large (47%) and a distinct segment of unconventional and anti-authoritarian thinkers with a passion for science, technology, culture, politics and the arts. Based on their fascination for science, arts, and life in the universe, we characterize them with the term Homo Universalis."

"The recent discovery of exoplanets is likely to fuel the interest of people in learning about the mysteries of the universe and possible life forms on other planets. If and when the discovery of life on other planets is confirmed by the scientific community in the coming years, it is likely that this group will become more and more engaged in the debate about the future of humanity and the place of planet Earth in the universe."

"The high score on the belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life and the typical values profile of believers in intelligent alien civilizations partly explains the immense popularity of space opera movies such as Star Wars. The fascination with the mysteries of the universe offers mankind a never-ending story to research, develop and experience."

There are striking country differences in the belief in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations (see figures in Appendix):

Russians, Mexicans, and Chinese are more likely to believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations than Americans.

Dutch, Indonesian and Turkish citizens are the least likely to believe the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations.

What Happened When Humans Met An 'Alien' Intelligence? Sex Happened

We have dreamed about it for so long. We've told stories, made movies, imagined what it would be like when we humans have our first "close encounter" with an intelligent alien, a creature about our size, who can gaze back, talk (even if we can't understand what's being said) who can scare us, thrill us, make us feel its mind. Who wouldn't want a moment like the one in E.T., when the little alien puts out his finger? But that's the movies.

We now know how big the universe is, how far the stars are from each other. Just as I was getting used to the idea that even if there's intelligent life out there, there's no way we'll ever be able to find the light years to get together, I opened Chip Walter's new book, Last Ape Standing, and discovered — it's already happened.

First Encounter

We've already met our intelligent alien. We almost certainly had sex with them. And we did it here, right here on Earth, not so many generations ago.

In Chip's book, he describes one such encounter: We're in Europe, in a forest, maybe. It was an ordinary day, around 40,000 years ago, and a small band of Homo sapiens, some hunters, slender, looking much like us, their families nearby, are moving through the woods, looking for a boar, rabbits, something to eat, when all of a sudden "they" appear.

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"Imagine this encounter, and its shattering effect," writes Walters. "Each group must have gazed at the other in bewildered amazement."

Courtesy of the Neanderthal Museum

In an instant they would have seen that these creatures resembled them, but were clearly not one of them. Why didn't they communicate in the same way or even make the same sounds? This wasn't simply a different tribe ... this was another creature altogether, perhaps a god or an animal, or something in between.

God? Animal? Something In Between

On one side of that meadow stood ... us, or rather our ancestors, a group we now call Cro-Magnon (after the cave in France where their bones were discovered). We were modern humans 40,000 years ago, emigrants from Africa, baby-faced, scant of hair, but loaded with brain. We were smart. We probably carried sharp hunting tools of our own design, flint knives and spears for throwing and we had taught ourselves to kill animals from a distance — animals like those aliens making mysterious noises on the other side of the meadow.

Courtesy of the Neanderthal Museum

What did the other group look like? They looked kind of like us, but stronger. Their hands were huge, their shoulders big, rounded with muscle, their faces, ah, their faces came with enormous noses, rich with nasal membranes that could warm the cold, dry air they breathed up north, where they lived.

We were more recently up from Africa, still dark skinned. They'd been 200,000 years in Europe, had grown fair, freckled and some of them had red or blond hair. And while you wouldn't know it from looking, their brains were even bigger than ours, at over 1700 cubic centimeters. "That's about 300 ccs larger than your brain or mine," says Walter. We had never seen their like, but you, you reading this, you know them from photos and magazines. They were Neanderthals. And Neanderthals have gotten a bum rap for the last hundred years.

Courtesy of the Neanderthal Museum

Caveman With A Club?

We think of Neanderthals as primitives, stooped, brutish, club bearing — one of those not-quite-upright apes in a standard Evolution of Man cartoon. But they weren't stooped. That was an error. In 1908, a prominent French scientist, Marcellin Boule, examined a set of Neanderthal bones found in Southern France, put them together, and discovered an apish, bowed figure. He decided that's what all Neanderthals looked like, but he was wrong.

Boule's specimen was 40 to 50 years old, seriously old for a Neanderthal. He had suffered from chronic arthritis, "a disease that had cruelly twisted the man's spine," Walters writes. (Thus, the stoop.) "Walking must have been agonizing given the state of his bones. He died with no more than two teeth, which would have made eating the normal rough, Neanderthal diet nearly impossible. Yet this man's fellow tribesmen must have carried and fed him specialized foods for years, otherwise he would never have lived to such a ripe age."

So these people (and they were "people" — we share a common ancestor; living up north for 200 thousand years had changed them and made them a different species), they were hardly "brutish." At the very least, they were gentle to their elders. They must have carried, fed and cared for that old fellow for years. What's more, there's evidence they thought about life in complicated ways.

There's a gravesite in Iraq where a Neanderthal was found, "positioned fetal-like, as though he were sleeping." Neanderthals buried their dead before we Homo sapiens did, and on this site, the skeleton appears to have once surrounded by flowers and evergreens. Investigators found traces of pollen below and around him, as if to say, "We didn't abandon this man. We too knew how to love, to grieve, and we laid him here with the same tenderness you have for your people, and like you, we wished him soft passage ..."

Neanderthals, says Steven Mithen of Reading University, may have spoken a more musical, tonal language, a mix of cooing and keening, singsong beats, accompanied by gestures. Chip Walter likes to think that in their speech, and early on with their burial practices, they may have been a touch "more softhearted than we are," but we really don't know.

So what happened that afternoon in our meadow, in that moment of very first encounter? Did we think, "Food!" and attack? Did we flee? Did they? Or did we watch them, wait, take tentative steps toward each other, wondering, "What are they? Can we get closer? Can we trust them?" "The big and primal question — the mastodon in the room so to speak," writes Walters, is the simplest one: "Are they a friend or an enemy?"

Killing Them With Kindness?

Anthropologists differ on what happened. There is some evidence, but not a lot, that we regularly attacked and eventually annihilated the Neanderthals. There's evidence too, that we crowded them out of the best hunting sites, making it harder for them to earn a living (and they needed to eat more than we do to stay alive). But the third possibility, writes Chip Walter, is that "if we killed them at all, we killed them with kindness. We neither murdered them nor outcompeted them. We mated with them and, in time, simply folded them into our species until they disappeared."

Love The One You're With

About 35,000 years ago, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived within shouting distance of each other in France and Spain for, at the very least, a few thousand years. If they mingled, some might have gone farther. There is a skeleton of a boy, found in Portugal, who lived after the last Neanderthals died in southern Spain, whose body seems to be a hybrid, part them, part us.

But the clincher is in your cells. I'm talking about you, you reading this, unless you are 100 percent Yoruba or San (groups that never emigrated from Africa). In 2010, scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, discovered that most humans on Earth, especially if they descend from Europe and most of Asia, carry about 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA in their cells. Proportions will vary. British comedian Eddie Izzard, discovered he's 2.8 percent Neanderthal. You don't carry Neanderthal DNA unless someone up your family tree coupled with one.

So that's our proof: that our first encounter with an intelligent alien led to ... umm, well ... more.

Chip Walter's Book is Last Ape Standing: The Seven Million Year Story of How and Why We Survived. It's the story of our family tree, which includes, amazingly, 27 (and still counting) different varieties of walking, upright humans. Nature produced many, many different human species, only one line of which led to us. The rest just blinked out. Here's a gorgeous look at some of our predecessors:

As for close encounters, Neanderthals aren't the only intelligent humans who lived alongside us. In Siberia, a separate species called the Denisovans hunted and settled in the Altai Mountains 40,000 years ago. Another group, the Red Deer Cave people lived in south central China as recently as 11,500 years ago. And a mini-version of humanity, Homo floresiensis, often called "hobbits" may have been on an Indonesian island as recently as 17,000 years ago. Henry Gee, of Cambridge University, likes to think they may still be with us, hiding in some remote cave or forest in Indonesia.

MAKE CHINA PAY FOR COVID 19 BIO WARFARE

For everyone under lockdown orders in the coronavirus pandemic, that is the key question. How long until American life can return to normal, without risking the disease reigniting out of control and overwhelming hospitals? Examining the question are three new reports, from the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics. While they differ in their conclusions, all are three are bleak. Life in the U.S. will not fully return to normal until a vaccine is distributed widely, and drastic interventions will be needed until then once restrictions are relaxed, all three conclude.

Three reports from think tanks and academics lay out how lockdown ends

All agree that until a vaccine is available, US life will not be fully normal

Calls for national lockdown range from 14 days to as long as three months

Once lockdown ends, social distancing measures would relax but not disappear

Gatherings of a certain size would still be banned, and remote work encouraged

Two plans call for the construction of a vast digital surveillance system

Would track movements of all Americans to trace potential virus exposure

Plans call for daily testing capacity ranging from massive to impossible 

Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID

For everyone under lockdown orders in the coronavirus pandemic, that is the key question. How long until American life can return to normal, without risking the disease reigniting out of control and overwhelming hospitals?

Examining the question are three new reports, from the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics.

While they differ in their conclusions, all are three are bleak. Life in the U.S. will not fully return to normal until a vaccine is distributed widely, and drastic interventions will be needed until then once restrictions are relaxed, all three conclude.

All three reports call for a period of national lockdown, which could only be lifted after certain conditions are met. For AEI, restrictions would ease state-by-state after a state recorded 14 days of falling daily new case numbers. 

For CAP, the national lockdown would continue for 45 days, while for Harvard, the most draconian, it would last three months.

The three plans differ in several of their proposals:

AEI plan: 14 day lockdown, capacity for 750,000 tests per week

CAP plan: 45-day lockdown, digital surveillance system for contact tracing

Harvard plan: Three-month lockdown, millions of daily tests, digital surveillance

The country's ability to expand testing to the levels proposed by Harvard is unclear -- as is the American public's willingness to accept a massive system of digital surveillance tracking their every move.

Severe as they may seem, however, ongoing measures such as these may be the only alternative to round after round of recurring lockdowns, if the outbreak reignites before a vaccine is available. 

Three new reports predict that American life will not return to normal for more than a year, until a vaccine is available. Pictured: A nearly empty Times Square on Thursday

Once restrictions ease, with schools and some non-essential businesses reopening, all three reports say that massive testing would be needed, ranging from 750,000 tests per week for the AEI report, to an astonishing 100 million daily tests in a Harvard whitepaper. 

The CAP report also proposes a stunning nationwide system of digital surveillance using cell phone location data to track everyone's potential exposure to known cases.

Such a system, deployed with success in authoritarian China, would be certain to raise difficult questions about privacy and individual liberty. 

While they differ in their details, the common points in the three reports are striking. 

Until there is a vaccine, gatherings of more than 50 people should be banned, and remote working should be continued where possible even after lockdowns end, they all agree. 

With a safe and effective vaccine more than a year away under the best case scenario, it seems clear that American life won't fully return to normal any time soon.

AEI: States could ease restrictions one-by-one after two weeks of declining daily new cases 

Among the three reports, the models from the conservative-leaning think tank AEI are the most optimistic about how soon restrictions could be eased. 

AEI envisions individual states moving one-by-one into what it calls 'Phase Two', a period in which social distancing requirements are relaxed, but not eliminated.

In Phase Two, the majority of schools, universities, and non-essential businesses could reopen, but working from home would still be encouraged where possible. Gatherings would be limited to less than 50 people. Those over 60 or with health risk factors would still be encouraged to isolate at home. 

The report states: 'the trigger for a move to Phase II should be when a state reports a sustained reduction in cases for at least 14 days (i.e., one incubation period); and local hospitals are safely able to treat all patients requiring hospitalization without resorting to crisis standards of care.'

As a further condition for Phase Two, AEI stipulates that the state would need the capacity to test all people with COVID-19 symptoms, along with capacity to conduct active monitoring of all confirmed cases and their contacts.'

AEI estimates that nationwide, 750,000 tests per week would be needed for successful contract tracing. Pictured: Coronavirus tests are administered in Malibu on Wednesday

This is known as 'contact tracing,' or identifying people who may have been exposed to known cases and ordering them to quarantine for 14 days. AEI estimates that nationwide, 750,000 tests per week would be needed for successful contract tracing.

Daily tests in the U.S. peaked at around 225,000 last week, so the AEI estimate seems attainable.

AEI's plan calls for rapid testing to be available at clinics and pharmacies, and for a national system of random testing to track the background rate of infection across states and identify community spread.

For people who tested positive, and their recent contacts, who did not need hospitalization, AEI proposes that 'Home isolation can be enforced using technology such as GPS tracking on cell phone apps.'

AEI argues that in order for a state to move to Phase Two, hospitals in a state need to be able to immediately expand capacity from 2.8 critical-care beds per 10,000 adults to 5–7 beds per 10,000 adults in the setting of an epidemic or other emergency. 

Access to ventilators in hospitals would also need to expand from three per 10,000 adults to a goal of 5–7 ventilators per 10,000 adults, AEI argues.

Under the plan, Phase Two would end when either a vaccine is available, or when rising case numbers triggered a return to lockdown. 

Center for American Progress: National cell phone location data surveillance system needed to track the population before restrictions ease

The recommendations under the plan from CAP, a left-leaning think tank founded by Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, are more pessimistic about the risks of emerging from lockdown. 

The CAP reports argues that a federally mandated, nationwide stay-at-home policy must be instituted 'for a minimum of 45 days'.

The report speaks glowingly of the dramatic steps taken by the Chinese government at the source of the pandemic, where in some cases families were physically locked into their apartments from the outside. 

'China’s lockdown was enormously successful in suppressing transmission,' the CAP report states. 'In China, a lockdown of two months achieved near-zero transmission, although the government does not count asymptomatic positive cases.'

In order to enter their version of 'Phase Two,' where social distancing rules are relaxed, CAP also calls for widespread testing, randomized surveillance testing, and 'instantaneous contact tracing'. 

The CAP report explains that by 'instantaneous contact tracing', it means a nationwide digital surveillance system that tracks the movements of every citizen using cell phone location data.

CAP calls for a nationwide digital surveillance system that tracks the movements of every citizen using cell phone location data (stock image)

'These methods use GPS, Bluetooth, cell tower, and Wi-Fi network data to identify whether the user’s phone pinged the same signals as the phone of a COVID-19-positive individual during the same time period,' CAP states. 

CAP writes approvingly of South Korea and Singapore, which used cell phone apps to digitally surveil the populations and track potential exposure from known cases. 

'These nations use mobile phone apps or mobile telecommunications infrastructure to notify individuals on their mobile phone through notifications or text messages if they have been in close proximity to an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19,' CAP writes. 

'The entity that hosts the data must be a trusted, nonprofit organization—not private technology companies or the federal government,' the think tank proposes. 'The app could be developed for a purely public health nonprofit entity such as the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)—an organization that represents state health officials—which would host the data.'

CAP proposes that use of the contact tracing app be required for anyone who wants to travel by airline. 

Any return to a semblance of normality will require several restrictions and protections to minimize the risk of transmission from daily operations. 

During Phase Two, CAP calls for the use of cloth face masks in public, bans on gatherings over 50 people, a 50 percent capacity cap on all subways, buses and trains, and widespread teleworking wherever possible.

'Once herd immunity has been achieved through mass vaccination, all remaining restrictions can be lifted,' the report states.

Extreme testing: Harvard white paper proposes that up to 100 MILLION tests a day may be needed to prevent recurring outbreaks 

While both the AEI and CAP reports say that massive, widespread testing is needed in order to lift lockdown restrictions, a Harvard whitepaper argues that they don't go nearly far enough in their projections.

The Harvard paper argues that the AEI and CAP estimates are low 'by one to three orders of magnitude.'

'Even under the most optimistic scenarios, we need to be testing millions of people per day to allow a significant return to the workforce,' the authors write.

'Tens of millions per day seems more likely and more than 100 million may be necessary in the worst case,' they continue.

A driver in a vehicle drops his COVID-19 test into a bin at a coronavirus mobile testing site in Los Angeles on Friday. Harvard says up to 100 million tests a day might be needed

Under that worst-case projection, nearly a third of the U.S. population would be tested for coronavirus daily -- a logistical challenge that seems virtually impossible to surmount. 

In a separate paper from Harvard's Safran Center for Ethics, it is argued that national lockdowns will need to persist for at least three months, until the end of June, to have any hope of containing the virus.

The Harvard plan argues that in order to reduce the risk of repeat lockdowns in the fall, a 90-day lockdown should be spent building a massive digital surveillance system for contact tracing and capacity for millions of tests a day, studying immunity in previously infected patients, and isolating vulnerable populations.

The paper proposes that anyone who proves immunity due to surviving the virus would be allowed out of quarantine, on the condition that they volunteer to join a Medical Reserve Corps to fight the pandemic.

ALL COUNTRIES WHO OWES CHINA AND SUFFERED DAMAGES FROM COVID 19 DO NOT PAY

CHINA IS LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR COVID-19 DAMAGE AND CLAIMS COULD BE IN THE TRILLIONS

As the novel coronavirus incubated in Wuhan from mid-December to mid-January, the Chinese state made evidently intentional misrepresentations to its people concerning the outbreak, providing false assurances to the population preceding the approach of the Lunar New Year celebrations on Jan. 25. In mid-December, an outbreak of a novel influenza-like illness was traced to workers and customers of the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which contained exotic and wild animal species. On Dec. 26, multiple Chinese news outlets released reports of an anonymous laboratory technician who made a startling discovery: The sickness was caused by a new coronavirus that was 87 percent similar to SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, sounded the alarm in an online chatroom on Dec. 30. That night, Wuhan public health authorities solicited information on the emergence of a “pneumonia of unclear cause,” but omitted Li’s discussion about SARS or a novel coronavirus. Li and other medical professionals who tried to disclose the emergence of the virus were suppressed or jailed by the regime. On Jan. 1, the state-run Xinhua News Agency warned, “The police call on all netizens to not fabricate rumors, not spread rumors, not believe rumors.” Four days after Li’s chatroom discussion, officers of the Public Security Bureau forced him to sign a letter acknowledging he had made “false comments,” and that his revelations had “severely disturbed the social order.” Li, who has become something of an underground folk hero in China against chicanery by state officials, ultimately died of the disease. China silenced other doctors raising the alarm, minimizing the danger to the public even as they were bewildered and overwhelmed. State media suppressed information about the virus. Although authorities closed the Wuhan “wet market” at the epicenter of the contagion, they did not take further steps to stop the wildlife trade. By Jan. 22, when the virus had killed just 17 yet had infected more than 570 people, China tightened its suppression of information about the coronavirus that it deemed “alarming,” and further censored criticism of its malfeasance. “Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.”

On Dec. 31, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission falsely stated that there was no human-to-human transmission of the disease, which it described as a seasonal flu that was “preventable and controllable.” On Feb. 1, the New York Times reported that “the government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.”

Importantly, China failed to expeditiously share information with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the novel coronavirus. For example, China waited until Feb. 14, nearly two months into the crisis, before it disclosed that 1,700 healthcare workers were infected. Such information on the vulnerability of medical workers is essential to understanding transmission patterns and to devise strategies to contain the virus. The experts at WHO were stymied by Chinese officials for data on hospital transmissions. China’s failure to provide open and transparent information to WHO is more than a moral breakdown. It is also the breach of a legal duty that China owed to other states under international law, and for which injured states — now numbering some 150 nations — may seek a legal remedy.

Unfortunately, China’s evasions are part of the autocratic playbook, repeating its obstruction of information that worsened the SARS crisis 18 years earlier. In that case, China tried to cover up the SARS epidemic, which led WHO member states to adopt the new International Health Regulations in 2005. In both cases, China and the world would have been spared thousands of unnecessary deaths had China acted forthrightly and in accordance with its legal obligations. Although China’s public health system has been modernized, observed Jude Blanchette, head of China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, its political system has regressed.

International Health Regulations

As one of the 194 states party to the legally binding 2005 International Health Regulations, China has a duty to rapidly gather information about and contribute to a common understanding of what may constitute a public health emergency with potential international implications. The legally binding International Health Regulations were adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1969, to control six infectious diseases: cholera, plague, yellow fever, smallpox, relapsing fever, and typhus. The 2005 revision added smallpox, poliomyelitis due to wild-type poliovirus, SARS, and cases of human influenza caused by a new subtype, set forth in the second annex.

Article 6 of the International Health Regulations requires states to provide expedited, timely, accurate, and sufficiently detailed information to WHO about the potential public health emergencies identified in the second annex in order to galvanize efforts to prevent pandemics. WHO also has a mandate in Article 10 to seek verification from states with respect to unofficial reports of pathogenic microorganisms. States are required to provide timely and transparent information as requested within 24 hours, and to participate in collaborative assessments of the risks presented. Yet China rejected repeated offers of epidemic investigation assistance from WHO in late January (and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in early February), without explanation. The Washington Post concluded in a story on Feb. 26 that China “was not sending details that WHO officials and other experts expect and need.” While WHO later commended China for its efforts, Mara Pillinger of Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law concluded that Beijing’s partial collaboration “makes it politically tricky for WHO to publicly contradict” China while still getting at least some useful data from China.

China’s Legal Responsibility

While China’s intentional conduct is wrongful, is it unlawful? If so, do other states have a legal remedy? Under Article 1 of the International Law Commission’s 2001 Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, states are responsible for their internationally wrongful acts. This commission’s restatement of the law of state responsibility was developed with the input of states to reflect a fundamental principle of international customary law, which binds all nations. “Wrongful acts” are those that are “attributable to the state” and that “constitute a breach of an international obligation” (Article 2). Conduct is attributable to the state when it is an act of state through the executive, legislative, or judicial functions of the central government (Article 4). While China’s failures began at the local level, they quickly spread throughout China’s government, all the way up to Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He is now being pilloried by Chinese netizens for his failures of action and inaction. The most prominent critic, Chinese tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, lambasted Xi for his mishandling of the coronavirus, calling him a “power hungry clown.” Ren soon disappeared.

Responsibility flows from local Wuhan authorities to Xi himself, which are all organs of the state of China, and whose conduct is therefore attributable to China. An “organ of the state” includes any person or entities that are acting in accordance with national law. Even if China were to disavow conduct by local authorities or state media as not necessarily directly attributable to the national government, such actions nevertheless are accorded that status if and to the extent the state acknowledged and adopted the conduct as its own, as was done by the officials in Beijing (Article 11).

Wrongful acts are those that constitute a breach of an international obligation (Article 11). A breach is an act that is “not in conformity with what is required of it by that obligation … .” China’s failure to expeditiously and transparently share information with WHO in accordance with the International Health Regulations constitutes an early and subsequently extended breach of its legal obligations (Article 14). Consequently, China bears legal responsibility for its internationally wrongful acts (Article 28). The consequences include full reparations for the injury caused by the wrongful acts. China did not intentionally create a global pandemic, but its malfeasance is certainly the cause of it. An epidemiological model at the University of Southampton found that had China acted responsibly just one, two, or three weeks more quickly, the number affected by the virus would have been cut by 66 percent, 86 percent, and 95 percent, respectively. By its failure to adhere to its legal commitments to the International Health Regulations, the Chinese Communist Party has let loose a global contagion, with mounting material consequences.

The cost of the coronavirus grows daily, with increasing incidents of sickness and death. The mitigation and suppression measures enforced by states to limit the damage are wrecking the global economy. Under Article 31 of the Articles of State Responsibility, states are required to make full reparations for the injury caused by their internationally wrongful acts. Injuries include damages, whether material or moral. Injured states are entitled to full reparation “in the form of restitution in kind, compensation, satisfaction and assurances and guarantees of non-repetition” (Article 34). Restitution in kind means that the injured state is entitled to be placed in the same position as existed before the wrongful acts were committed (Article 35). To the extent that restitution is not made, injured states are entitled to compensation (Article 36), and satisfaction, in terms of an apology and internal discipline and even criminal prosecution of officials in China who committed malfeasance (Article 37). Finally, injured states are entitled to guarantees of non-repetition, although the 2005 International Health Regulations were designed for this purpose after SARS (Article 48). As the world continues to suffer the costs of China’s breach of its legal duties, it remains to be seen whether the injured states can be made whole.

No one expects that China will fulfill its obligations, or take steps required by the law of state responsibility. So, how might the United States and other nations vindicate their rights? The legal consequences of an internationally wrongful act are subject to the procedures of the Charter of the United Nations. Chapter XIV of the charter recognizes that states may bring disputes before the International Court of Justice or other international tribunals. But the principle of state sovereignty means that a state may not be compelled to appear before an international court without its consent. This reflects a general proposition in international law, and its fundamental weakness.

Still, injured states are not without remedy. Barring any prospect for effective litigation, states could resort to self-help. The law of state responsibility permits injured states to take lawful countermeasures against China by suspending their own compliance with obligations owed to China as a means of inducing Beijing to fulfill its responsibilities and debt (Article 49). Countermeasures shall not be disproportionate to the degree of gravity of the wrongful acts and the effects inflicted on injured states (Article 51). The choice of countermeasures that injured states may select is wide open, with only minimal limitations. For example, countermeasures may not involve the threat or use of force or undermine the human rights of China (Article 50). Except for these limitations, however, the United States and other injured states may suspend existing legal obligations or deliberately violate other legal duties owed to China as a means to induce Beijing to fulfill its responsibilities and address the calamitous damages it has inflicted on the world.

The menu for such countermeasures is as limitless as the extent that international law infuses the foreign affairs between China and the world, and such action by injured states may be individual and collective and does not have to be connected explicitly to the kind or type of violations committed by China. Thus, action could include removal of China from leadership positions and memberships, as China now chairs four of 15 organizations of the United Nations system. States could reverse China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, suspend air travel to China for a period of years, broadcast Western media in China, and undermine China’s famous internet firewall that keeps the country’s information ecosystem sealed off from the rest of the world. Remember that countermeasures permit not only acts that are merely unfriendly, but also licenses acts that would normally be a violation of international law. But the limitations still leave considerable room to roam, even if they violate China’s sovereignty and internal affairs, including ensuring that Taiwanese media voices and officials are heard through the Chinese internet firewall, broadcasting the ineptness and corruption of the Chinese Communist Party throughout China, and reporting on Chinese coercion against its neighbors in the South China Sea and East China Sea, and ensuring the people of China understand the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party in unleashing a global contagion.