There is a lot of blame to go around for the uncontrolled outbreak of the coronavirus. China has been widely criticized for covering up the virus even as it ran unabated across that country. Now another entity is coming under fire…the World Health Organization (WHO).
As information started coming out of China about the virus, the WHO was acting arguably dismissive of the virus, standing in lockstep with the Chinese Communist Party’s apparent suppressing of the potency of the disease.
“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,” WHO tweeted back in January.
January 14: WHO echoes China’s assessment: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” Wuhan doctors knew the opposite for at least five weeks.https://t.co/ZZ38IVZrM2
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) March 23, 2020
So, after China either blew off the virus or purposely covered up its severity, especially in the crucial first few weeks of the outbreak where it may have been contained, the virus has now infected some 652,00 people worldwide, including over 116,000 in the United States.
Of that number, nearly 2,000 Americans have died with nearly a quarter of that number being in New York City as of the time of this writing. This is according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the virus in real time.
Fox News has been told that political correctness by the WHO in deliberately underestimating the extent of the virus’ threat led to the current pandemic.
“(WHO) has been trying to be politically correct by underestimating the extent of the threat. They lost some credibility when they stated in late January that the global risk assessment was moderate,” said Dr. Attila Hertelendy, a Florida-based expert in biomedicine.
“For an international body that people (and) governments and the business community looks to for advice, they are simply too slow, burdened by bureaucracy and political correctness.
They have a great staff working for them, and many of my colleagues are advisors, they just need to listen to them and take action swiftly.”
Hertelendy is not the only one raising alarm bells about the WHO.
Dr. Stanley Weiss, a professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Rutgers Medical School in New Jersey agreed, saying that the lack of early action has been especially frustrating for the medical community.
“I was personally frustrated at WHO’s apparent great fear in moving from classifying from epidemic to pandemic, all the more given all the evidence we had gathered from China’s experience,” he said.
“Historically, a great strength of the WHO was its expertise in consensus building. Here, we needed leadership, not merely consensus building. It is hard for some organizations to act.”
On December 31 of last year, Chinese authorities notified the WHO of the outbreak of a so-called novel strain of coronavirus which was causing severe illness.
For Weeks, the WHO resisted declaring the virus a pandemic, waiting until March 11, a full 2-1/2 months after they were notified by China to declare it a pandemic. Weiss’s opinion is that often times, science is frequently ignored “in favor of the politics within WHO’s vast constituency.”
“The WHO waited much too long to declare a ‘Global Health Emergency,’ a designation that importantly would have alerted public health officials in countries neighboring China to start preparing.
Similarly, the WHO initially refused to declare a global pandemic, bizarrely claiming that they no longer used this designation, but then ultimately did so,” said Dr. Dena Grayson, a Florida-based expert on infectious diseases.
“This also likely caused substantial delays in preparedness by other nations in advance of this deadly virus.”
There are also some critics who believe that WHO acted as an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
According to Brett Schaefer, a Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at the Heritage Foundation noted that China has “a well-established record of suppressing information that it considers harmful,” which is nothing new where it concerns the WHO.
“Thus, it is hardly surprising that it failed to be transparent and truthful in reporting details on COVID-19 to WHO and the international community. In fact, this is not the first time this has happened,” he said.
“In 2003, China concealed and denied an infectious disease outbreak—later called SARS—for months.”
“Given this history, the willingness of WHO to take China’s statements at face value is shocking.
WHO leadership is too susceptible to political pressure in its decisions on declaring a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), and this needs to be addressed.”
In what should be a surprise to nobody, the WHO works as a specialized agency under the auspices of the United Nations, falling under the UN’s Sustainable Development Group. The WHO was established in 1948, the same time the UN was created.
The organization was given the responsibility of being in charge of monitoring public health risks and overseeing responses to emergencies.
The organization is based in Geneva, Switzerland and has an annual operating budget of $2.1 billion, with 194 member states.
Of course, the United States is the biggest contributor to WHO, totaling $400 million in 2017 and is also the largest financier, contributing more money than even the United Nations, followed by South Korea, Australia, the Gates Foundation and finally Japan.
Despite evidence that China downplayed the outbreak late last year, WHO doesn’t appear to be overly concerned.
Some critics have accused the organization of covering up Chinese misconduct at the onset, and has instead praised China for the country’s apparent authoritarian clampdown in making it look like they were trying to contain the disease, when the horse had already escaped the barn before the door was shut.
It was too little, too late as far as mitigating the spread outside of China.
Some have also criticized the role of WHOs leader, Ethiopian national Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was given the position in 2017 by member states and who is in the middle of a five-year term.
People are questioning whether he sucked up to China in order to secure massive donations to the organization.
Ghebreyesus routinely lauds Chinese President Xi Jinping for his handling of the outbreak, while refusing to address early cover-ups and the fact that China in fact silenced several doctors who were attempting to speak out about the viral outbreak in Wuhan.
There is also the fact that Taiwanese officials claimed they alerted WHO back in December about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the pathogen.
Leaders in Taipei said that the information was not passed on to other countries and basically went unheeded.
Taiwan Says It Warned WHO About Coronavirus In December, But Its Warnings Were Ignored. https://t.co/fgb309QosV
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 21, 2020
Currently, Taiwan is forbidden to be a member of the WHO because of the so-called “One China” policy pushed by the People’s Republic of China.
“Overall, the WHO is a useful organization and its scientific experts are absolutely world-class,” Grayson said.
“Unfortunately, like all too many organizations, politics sometimes get in the way of decisive action.”
Schaefer noted that the WHO may be facing some scrutiny after the pandemic starts to fade.
“If the organization performs well, member governments are more confident in having it assume an increased role. If they fail, the member states look to reform them or create alternative mechanisms,” he said.
“During the Ebola crisis in 2014, WHO was strongly criticized for its slow and ineffective response, and the member states pressed the leadership for reforms to address those failings.
It is clear from the response to COVID-19 that more changes are necessary.”
Part of the issue as seen by some experts is the fact that as part of the UN, the WHO is also suffering the same problem.
Dr. Roger Bate is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a specialist in public health and infectious diseases.
He noted that bloated bureaucracies, such as those at the UN, need to be looked at going forward in order to stop a similar pandemic much earlier.
“WHO is part of the UN. UN is overly bureaucratic, but we need it because it is the global organization where member states can come to discuss issues like this,” he explained.
“WHO has become less relevant in the past few decades, COVID-19 remind us why it is important and why, when it fails, we all pay the price.”
Bate also said that the WHO has to be more aggressive in demanding local action from wherever a pandemic begins.
“I believe following COVID-19, U.S. and E.U. will back it because of the huge cost we are now paying. Basically, WHO should get the funds it requires and can embarrass nations like China that do not act properly,” he said.
“And this will happen again unless China shuts its wet markets with live animals. Contagions from zoonotic viruses are the problem, and China is ground zero for these.”
Hertelendy agreed with Bate that the so-called “playbook” needs to be changed.
“Following a politically correct agenda doesn’t work in the 21st century,” he added. “Simply, they need to focus on restoring credibility, admit mistakes and be transparent and ready to make decisions quickly and confidently.”
We have said it before, and we will say it again. This entire thing is on China. They mishandled this from the jump. And now, we are all paying the prices for their incompetence.
Add to their incompetence the same shown from the World Health Organization and obviously something needs to change before this happens next time. And there will be a next time.
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