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Kudos to the Trump administration and Sen. Rand Paul for persevering in holding Dr. Anthony Fauci’s feet to the fire. Fauci allegedly covered up the origins of COVID-19 as 1.1 million Americans died from the virus.

But what about the biggest culprit, China?

For seven weeks or more, starting in the winter of 2019, Chinese officials violated their international commitments and ethical obligation to prevent a domestic epidemic from becoming a global pandemic.

They muzzled and even jailed Chinese doctors and journalists, allowed international flights to carry infected passengers to countries around the globe, and withheld information on the virus’s human-to-human transmission and its genomic sequence.

Back in 2020, President Donald Trump insisted the nation that “unleashed this plague on the world” should have to pay. He said nothing should be off the table: taxes, tariffs or a “global summit on reparations.”

During his campaign for reelection, Trump floated forcing China to pay $50 trillion to compensate.

Yet now these plans have disappeared from the national dialogue.

American CEOs are gladhanding with Chinese officials, and American universities are welcoming Chinese students and Chinese grant money.

Even Trump is proceeding gingerly, apparently worried about complicating dealings with Beijing by bringing up COVID-19 recriminations. No one is calling for justice for our grandparents, spouses and friends killed by COVID-19.

That’s unacceptable.

Granted, many of the ways to make China “pay” that were suggested in the immediate aftermath of the carnage turn out to be impractical.

Taking China to court in the U.S. and suing for damages has proved to be a two-edged sword. Foreign countries are immune from most lawsuits in the U.S., but even when they can be sued on certain narrow grounds, it turns out to be virtually impossible to collect actual monetary damages. Eric Schmitt, former attorney general of Missouri, sued China in 2020 for worsening the COVID-19 crisis in his state by withholding gowns, masks and other hospital equipment from export to the U.S. China refused to respond, and a federal judge awarded Missouri a $24 billion default judgment. But how to collect?

Missouri considered seizing Chinese assets in the U.S., but assets of foreign governments in the U.S. are generally shielded from seizure, just as U.S. government property is protected in other countries. If the U.S. government were to allow Missouri to seize Chinese assets here, warns international law expert Chimene Keitner, it could expose American assets in China to confiscation.

China made it clear what it thought of the lawsuit. It returned favor, suing Schmitt and the state of Missouri for $50 billion for damaging the reputation of China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Multinational organizations – the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the International Court of Justice – have proven useless. The WHO capitulated to China’s unwillingness to allow international investigators to search for the virus’s origins. The UN Security Council is paralyzed by China’s permanent status as a veto-wielding member. And the International Court of Justice, which is empowered by the WHO to settle disputes arising from health matters, has no authority if China refuses to accept its verdict.

Millions dead, billions of dollars in economic value lost. Nailing Fauci is hardly enough.