Whereas the novel coronavirus, hereafter referred to as COVID–19, emerged in the People’s Republic of China and began to spread as early as November 2019; Whereas, by late December, dozens of citizens of the People’s Republic of China had fallen victim to COVID–19; Whereas, on December 30, Wuhan health authorities identified, interrogated, and reprimanded multiple doctors in response to their decisions to warn other Chinese citizens of the danger posed by this new disease; Whereas, on January 1, 2020, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau questioned eight Chinese doctors who had posted information on COVID–19 on WeChat; Whereas, on January 1, the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered laboratories to stop testing for COVID–19 and destroy samples of the same; Whereas, on January 2, the Wuhan Institute of Virology mapped the genome of COVID–19 in order to inform development of public health interventions and medical treatments for COVID–19, but the Government of the People’s Republic of China withheld genetic information on COVID–19 until January 9; Whereas, on January 11, the Wuhan Health Commission insisted that there were no new cases of infection by COVID–19; Whereas, on January 13, the first COVID–19 case outside of the People’s Republic of China was announced in Thailand; Whereas, on January 14, the World Health Organization announced that the Government of the People’s Republic of China had seen no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus ; Whereas, on January 23, the Government of the People’s Republic of China began to implement quarantine measures to stem the spread of COVID–19, at the same time as the disease had already begun to proliferate throughout the world; Whereas, on March 11, the World Health Organization declared COVID–19 a global pandemic, with 118,000 persons infected and 4,291 dead in 114 different countries at the time of the announcement