Could this not have waited a few months? In the middle of an pandemic, to cut off funding to the only organization that is coordinating the global response is just crazy. The pettiness of this administration seems to know no bounds. Even if we accept that WHO screwed up in their early response and yeah they could be critical of China, cutting funding is wildly disproportionate reaction.
China will offcourse make up the difference, and appropriately gain more influence. As it rightly should.
The WHO arguably made the pandemic worse by discouraging the use of masks, propagating information that turned out to be false and dangerous saying there was no human-to-human interaction and generally sided with china in the informational flow.
Easier to ignore the WHO if you don't give them any money.
"Tedros, as he is called, said the WHO does not recommend limiting either trade or travel to China at this time. “In fact, we oppose it,” he said. The health organization said it would question border closures, quarantining of airplane passengers who aren’t ill, and similar steps."
This organization is either totally incompetent or complicit with spreading CCP propaganda. In fact, they reacted significantly slower than the US government.
there are plenty of ways to slow the spread that doesn't unnecessarily break up families, keep people away from their jobs, create job loss, keep people stranded, and harbor poor goodwill towards another country. the travel ban has uprooted lives, and now here we are, and the u.s. government is still phoning this in. the travel ban against china was a pointless exercise in political posturing and akin to a clam's defense strategy. it isn't a big surprise that the virus still got here, primarily from europe, and we weren't even aware of it because the u.s. wasn't testing nor were they tracking, the two things that have time and time again shown to be extremely effective.
there are plenty of models that quarantining the source only does not work. china even proved this. the initial quarantine of wuhan only was not working, so they had to expand it to everywhere. south korea showed testing and tracking worked better than shutting down travel.
the u.s. travel ban against china was ineffective. however, it will now continue indefinitely because the u.s. is in the middle of a shit show, and this will continue to harm people and businesses affected by the travel ban. it will add months if not years of delays to visa processing everywhere.
Travel bans are not effective unless they can be strict and from everywhere. Like, if you are a small island country that can keep everyone out or do strict quarantine, sure. But the travel ban on China was just theatrics and "microbial theatre" as is evidenced by, uh, reality.
The body count from those statements will probably be in the mid-100k or so. By instantly trying to politicise any criticism of his many failures Trump incited his moron followers to ignore the situation in the critical early weeks. States resisted shutdowns to score points with their cheetoh-fuhrer and that will end up killing thousands.
Maybe that's because in front of the media some experts consider to uncover their face as a worthwhile risk, in order to reach to people understanding more easily.
That's not all experts, though, many of them still wear their mask in front of the camera.
Why do you think that the WHO bears no responsibility for spreading misinformation? Often times they simply repeat CCP propaganda verbatim, arguably worsening the crisis. Then there's the flagrant lies about masks, calling travel bans ineffective then scrambling to change tone, delaying declarations of status, etc etc.
The WHO team was instrumental in getting the Chinese to report accurate infection rates, within 2 days of them arriving in country the reporting system was completely overhauled and they started reporting clinically diagnosed cases as well as positive tests at a time when testing capacity was minimal. This was a crucial contribution in illuminating the scale of the outbreak early on. Before that they, like everyone else, was almost entirely dependent on information from the Chinese government.
The WHO had developed a test kit, was distributing it and was helping countries ramp up production at a time when the US was making a complete mess of testing. Many third world countries are heavily dependent on WHO expertise and support. This move is a knife in their backs.
Honestly, who has the best track record of tackling this issue and taking it seriously. The WHO, or a man who was calling it a hoax 6 weeks after the WHO had alerted of possible international transmission?
>South Korea, whose success and strategies have been ignored.
The WHO published summaries and support for the South Korean approach to the virus on 21 January, particularly highlighting their approach to testing and contact tracing and recommending similar approaches elsewhere. The WHO then started providing technical expertise to help countries set up testing and contact tracing systems, especially in poorer countries without that knowhow.
What was Trump doing, was he setting up a G20 summits to co-ordinate the global response like George Bush did during the financial crisis in 2008? Taking a role of global leadership? Nope, more than 5 weeks later while the WHO was leading efforts to track and contain the virus, Trump was still calling the whole thing a hoax at a mass rally in the US.
Trump can throw blame wherever he likes, you can pick nits in the activities of organisations that have been at the forefront of actually tackling this crisis. Whatever. But de-funding the WHO right now is a disgusting and reprehensible attack on the world's ability to tackle this crisis, from a country that was instrumental is setting up and running the WHO and it's predecessors for more than 100 years.
Their crime was to be rewarded for their philanthropy at a ceremony where Fauci was a presenter. That makes the three of them "pals" in a nefarious cabal.
What has happened to the right wing in this country? It's all qannon, absurd conspiracies, pizzagate and the rest.
That is a very clearly labeled photo of recipients of the 2001 Carnegie mlMedal of philanthropy. Meaning all of those people were called to a location in NY to receive an award for work they did in philanthropy. It doesn't in anyway imply they had a prior connection, or were best friends or are conspiring together. They all got an award on the dame day. It like even the least bit of critical thinking is abandoned for grasping at the absurd.
Everytime I see stuff like this I think of the reporting of the people in SE Asia who were making boatloads of money creating fake news sites last election. One quote from his interview that sticks with me is he said he would just make stuff up, the more absurd the better - the more it would spread as long as it had a few trigger words in it. But always target Republicans, Democrats never share it, but Republican conspiracies is where the money is.
Democrats have the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which is spread by almost all US news media... So Republicans are not the only ones that engage in conspiracy theories.
Is this supposed to be a positive or negative fact? I know Soros is somewhat of a philanthropist but haven't heard of Fauci, and you bringing this up makes it sound accusatory.
it is coming from an administration that lies with nearly every word, and they aren't even constructed lies. they are lies equivalent to what you make up on the spot when you forget your proverbial homework. it really isn't surprising. this administration commits treason on a daily basis, as they repeatedly throw the entire country under the bus for their own gain. it is truly sickening.
It is also throwing the entire planet under the bus...
Denial of the global warming emergency should be accountable before the justice -- and probably even the International Criminal Court, if only they had ratified the Rome Statute -- in the near future.
I wish this kind of hard bargaining is postponed till the present crisis is over. A lot of poor people in the world are eager to get back to their normal lives and livelihoods. WHO has been proactive, even though late, in co-ordinating with governments to get serious with their actions.
What they did these last months should be the last nail in the coffin.
More like a health organization they act like a political one taking sides with China and ignoring/censoring Taiwan even if they managed to control de spread of the virus.[1][2]
And if that wasn't enough, they actively insisted that all the measures we're taking now were pointless.
Why would anyone want a health organization that only cares about politics?
I lack a lot of context here, but I recently saw a tweet of theirs from January. It was jarring to see how much they uncritically went along with China’s narrative about the virus. I understand a lot about the situation is unprecedented and especially in early weeks there was a lot of confusion and a lot of unknowns. But hopefully this at least will spur them to act more cautiously in regard to info from China.
I don't think their behavior is redeemable, given they continue to lie.
After all, the WHO Director-General claimed within the last week without a shred of evidence that he was subject to racist and derogatory attacks from Taiwan's leaders.
This is after WHO threw Taiwan under the bus and denied them access to critical health information on the express orders from China.
The entire organization is corrupt. Blindly repeating CCP propaganda and punishing China's enemies is not the sign of a healthy organization.
Their recommendations were, at times, completely false.
By "their recommandations", you are alluding to when they said that travel bans on China where ineffective (that's true, only complete border closure is effective), and to when they said there was no proof of human-human transmission (that was true when they said it, nobody knew yet, except some Chinese scientists prevented from speaking by their government).
I searched for the sources, and all that I found is that Taiwan asked WHO more investigation and verification of China's affirmation. Taiwan did not add any study results or scientific knowledge, so had nothing to really "warn" about.
The China "results" were actually biased, so Taiwan was right to ask verification, but that's only retrospectively. At the time, there was no such certainty of their wrongdoing, especially given that they also collaborated by other means.
> The China "results" were actually biased, so Taiwan was right to ask verification, but that's only retrospectively. At the time, there was no such certainty of their wrongdoing, especially given that they also collaborated by other means.
The reason you didn't find much is that the WHO refused to pass on Taiwan's warning.
Taiwanese doctors had direct emails from multiple colleagues in Wuhan, some of whom were punished by the local government for speaking. Doctors getting sick with the virus was direct evidence of human to human transmission.
Keep in mind that China also covered up and denied the existence of SARS for months. The WHO's decision to aid in suppressing the information of the epidemic has cost the entire globe countless lives and economic damage. What is it that so motivates you to defend them that you comment 20 times in this thread?
FWIW, I've followed the news this time and during SARS from the start, from local media in Taiwan and been deeply disappointed with the WHO and early international reporting both times.
Also, I like supra-national bodies. They warrant that the non-zero sum game that is our planet and societies still live on...
PS: did Taiwan try to pass the warning directly? They could have published through other ways, Twitter being only one among numerous examples. This is a sincere question, not a trap.
Yes. It was in national media and the TW CDC has a Twitter account that was tweeting about it repeatedly for weeks while the WHO was still downplaying it.
Counterpoint: imagine an international organisation's leader having to stroke Trump's ego to be allowed access into the country. Now replace Trump with Xi. Apparently that's what happened, if this analysis is to be believed: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/trump-turns-...
Which seems obvious. The WHO is just an intermediating body between nations. As so, it's not surprising politics is in play behind the core of the organization...
The fact is when the WHO was
ringing every alarm bell they could reach, and the CIA and CDC was warning of an imminent threat, Trump was calling it a hoax. If you’re so insistent on punishing those that missed opportunities to take the threat seriously, a bit of consistency in that would be appreciated.
The crucial contribution the WHO made was forcing the Chinese to revise their reporting system and publish accurate infection counts in mid January. They could only do that once they had a team on the ground working with the Chinese and that required Chinese cooperation. Up to that point they and we were utterly reliant on China for information.
Given the weight of US in UNO, why would they want to stop their funding, instead of pushing for a reform of WHO?
Of course everybody benefits from the existence of an organ like WHO, the only problems would be the number and quality of its experts network and labs. And to reform that, that's in the opposite direction of stopping funds...
It is not about to solve the problem but to gain political point. Pointing finger as hard as to avoid accountability.
Chinese virus, virus will bring job to US, left wing nasty media, nasty democrat, Europe treat US bad etc etc
I doubt it, because the attack lacks seriousness when it's led by Trump.
It is right that WHO should have waited more verification of scientific data before publishing easily misinterpreted too-short statements, on Twitter or elsewhere. But look who is denouncing that.
If you want to make changes in the WHO fine, you contribute a major share if it’s funding, you should get a commensurate say, but de-funding right now at the height of the crisis is ludicrously reckless and irresponsible. Are you really going to argue this move right now is in the best interests of the USA and the world?
From a life long Conservative voter here in the UK, this is serious. Get a grip. I never thought Trump was funny, but _nobody_ is laughing any more. US Republicanism needs to face up to the fact it took a badly wrong turn with this guy.
The WHO did not make the problem worse, because their statement just said that no human-human link was found yet, but that of course did not prevent scientists from launching new studies or continuing current studies to fill this gap. From a scientist perspective, to the contrary, stating the absence of knowledge would provoke the need for more studies.
Oh, I saw your other reply of my previous comment.
Well, you're right that physicians directly emailing other physicians is a good source for being cautious about China declarations, especially under an authoritarian government not allowing other forms of publications.
But still, from the point of view of WHO, it was not clear that there was such a pressure on experts. They only had China's studies in hands.
PS: well, maybe there was something more political going on. You seem well documented and I believe you. But they had to play with China on their side. Changing that means huge reforms, of not only WHO but UN. And reforms, not deletions...
This is a different link and, as it mentions, Taiwan's CDC has email receipts of its communications with the WHO.
In an outbreak situation, the correct response is NOT to say, "until you've published a study we'll tell the world there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission". If multiple doctors are getting sick from their patients, there IS evidence of human-to-human transmission.
If those doctors are in an authoritarian country that controls the flow of information, but they've emailed their colleagues abroad, that information itself must be shared by any responsible health organization.
This is true, absolutely, but had no material effect on the world's ability to respond to the situation. Suppose they had reported possible human transmission in December, instead of early January, would that have made any difference to Trump calling it a hoax on February 28?
You’re seriously telling me that the work they are doing right now World wide is making the situation worse?
This is classic Trump. Instead of taking effective action, he’s picking a fight because he knows his supporters will rally round, his opponents will be enraged and now it’s a partisan bun fight. De-funding the WHO is an appalling attack on the worlds ability to fight this pandemic. What is Trumps plan to actually help solve this problem?
> Why is it reckless? The WHO has arguably made the problem worse.
Ah, this is a typical conservative response. "The government responded ineffectively!" they will say, to which the only possible response is to simply start dismantling government institutions and replace them with their corporate friends.
Then, when the next crisis occurs, and the even further weakened public institutions struggle to respond, they can remind us that they were right all along - it is the institutions that have failed us! Etc etc, into the downward spiral.
"Starve the beast" is not a strategy that can possibly result in reform, and I have trouble believing that anybody advocating it believes it in good faith.
This is all bullshit that Trump (and his self certified visionary crew) want people to focus on, so no one really asks what useful outcomes have the Whitehouse actually produced over the last 4 years? I cant see one thing.
> It is an open secret among international diplomats and public health experts that WHO is “not fit for mission” (as one of them put it to me), riddled with politics and bureaucracy. Given its previous failures and the warning that was Sars, its leadership has no excuse for reacting so oddly, and so tardily, to the current crisis.
What are you talking about? The US is at the top of the handling of the crisis. You could definitely critique Trump and the fact he can't keep from saying some of the most ridiculous and petty things, but even Gavin Newsom has complimented the way this has been handled. If you only ever look at top headlines, you'll believe the world is about to end and Trump is responsible.
Also, how is Trump responsible for Italy and Spain? Or are you so xenophobic that you believe that only the US could possibly have handled this for them? Italy and Spain listened to the WHO and they suffered and continue to suffer because of it. Trump didn't completely listen to the WHO and saved lives. Now, maybe he should have closed things down earlier and followed the Taiwan and South Korea models, but those countries did well because they didn't listen to the WHO and knew China was lying because of the last flu outbreak.
Do I think Trump is doing A+ work, no, but I can see that the US is doing much better than many other countries. And when you say that Trump is doing a bad job, you do realize that there are teams of people working on this. So you are saying that everyone who's working on this crisis is mishandling everything? If it's only Trump, what do you think he did wrong? You might say he downplayed the pandemic, but everyone did. And if you think that, what should he have said? It's easy to use hindsight and say people did these things wrong. I think everyone is doing the best they can.
I'm really tired of seeing this criticism with no evidence and with other countries that clearly did a worse job. I don't think it's fair to blame the leaders of those other countries either, when it's pretty clear that China and the WHO deserve a lot of the blame.
The WHO is not a scapegoat, they are directly responsible for thousands of deaths, and untold suffering. They may have done it because of their close ties to China, and they may have believed what they were saying, but at this point would you trust anything they say?
Lots of commenters have pointed out a pattern of increasing failures and shortcoming by the WHO, which I wasn't aware of, but I still have to think: don't we need a centralized touchstone for these kinds of crises? Even if the WHO needs to be dismantled and rebuilt, isn't a dysfunctional one better than nothing at all?
It's only "better than nothing at all" if you assume that any action it could take is better than doing nothing. That doesn't seem to have been true recently to me. Was https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=19 better than nothing?
WHO advised the world to perform as many tests as possible. And that was an excellent advice, only it was ignored and not taken seriously. That's an example where the WHO is not the problem but its enforcement capability (just the same problem with UN decisions on war zones, which can never be enforced).
To solve that, a reform is needed. But absolutely not by cutting its funds, which is silly.
Yes, unfortunately, as all UN parts, the WHO is a consensus organ, at the barycenter of individual countries' participating scientists... meanwhile, in countries or cities better connected with their experts, or just with better experts, the reaction is better and faster.
The exact quote was: "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test."
'As many tests as possible' is useless advice. Imagine if GDPR said companies should make data as secure as possible or NHTSA said make cars as safe as possible.
No it's a good advice. Because then that would have raised soon an acute awareness about asymptomatic bearers (e.g. through testing a representative sample of the general population), and thus awareness of the necessity of early lockdown.
Also, being able to test anybody who asks it would have dismissed arbitrary criteria that are pushed by governments around the world to minimize the illness. For example in the country where I am, it was until recently difficult to get tested unlike there was an established contact with a tested positive person.
I agree tests are useful, however the advice was not specific enough. The WHO should have specified how many tests are needed for various outcomes, offered early modeling, and facilitated information exchange to improve those models. Instead they simply played politics and offered very generalized and non-specific advice which overwhelmingly downplayed the risk.
Maybe a country has 1000 tests on hand, they test that first 1k people and can say they followed the WHO's advice. That's all that was possible given their immediate stock.
This doesn't sound like a good advice. It's not actionable. We don't have enough capacity to test more. If we could test a billion people tomorrow, we would already do it.
My fav useless tweet from WHO is "there's no evidence human human transmission". I mean, if you don't know for sure, then let's not announce it.
You do realize you linked to a January 14th tweet by the WHO stating:
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.
They published a status of non-knowledge, easily misinterpreted. And sometimes later they published more alarmist statuses. It is quite normal to be wrong sometimes, even in science-related establishments.
Well if you want my opinion, I don't think they're particularly at fault for others inability to interpret what they meant by that tweet. I find that tweet to be pretty clear, but also nothing noteworthy. Don't see how we're better off than had they simply not tweeted it. Again, I don't think we're necessarily worse off, just not better off.
I was just responding to the comment above mine, which asked "what did they do", and tried to show that was probably the point the poster above that was making.
As to the main topic? I mostly think this is just more petty distraction, deflection, and pointing fingers. But, I do think it's worth considering what the WHO's purpose is and whether or not it's serving that purpose sufficiently. As to how I feel about cutting funds, I'm not sure yet...
In this case, the situation is that they communicate a lot and most of their communications are frankly beneficial to the world. Some of their publications are not, as we saw here. Considering the whole, it is better than nothing.
It was leading people to think that human transmission was unlikely.
The equivalent yet still factually correct statement is "covid maybe transmits between humans". When you add uncertainty to a statement, it becomes factually correct.
In this case, doing nothing would have been better.
> Trump and his supporters have focused on a 14 January WHO tweet reporting the findings of preliminary Chinese studies suggesting “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission.
> While the WHO was obliged to report on the latest findings of a member state at the source of the outbreak, its officials told their counterparts in technical briefings on 10 and 11 January, and briefed the press on 14 January, that human-to-human transmission was still a strong possibility given the experience of past coronavirus epidemics and urged suitable precautions.
> [Gavin Yamey, the director of Duke University’s center for policy impact in global health] said it was ridiculous to point to a single tweet early in the pandemic as the fixed position of the WHO. “The whole point of science is that we have initial hypotheses and initial ideas, and we update those ideas as more and more data emerges,” he said.
It was certainly better than Trump calling the disease a hoax concocted by the his political opponents including the media, so whatever problems WHO may have on COVID-19 response, Donald Trump is in no position to criticize.
Most commenters' opinions are based on deformations of what WHO really said. US media seem to negatively interpret the indeciseness of WHO, even if all individual countries' health organizations hardly knew better: at the beginning, very few was known about the virus (partly because China did not share everything they new on it, but that was still not revealed).
An example, WHO really said:
"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission"
which is realistic and prudent. But in this thread an in every other place on internet, it is interpreted by US people as:
"there is no human-to-human transmission"
which is downright crazy.
Also, I see a lot of mixing with Taiwan issues, even though the particular data about the pandemics in this country (and yes I am in favor of Taiwan independence, but that does not matter, and that's my point) did not change at all the scientific and public health conclusions and advises to be taken. In other words, to do their public health job, the WHO had absolutely no need to quote Taiwan in particular. Of course they also considered not angering China and so refrained to speak of Taiwan because of that too, but it would be the same for any of the UNO Security Council countries' delicate issues, including US.
If WHO was to be rebuilt upon better bases, everybody would benefit from it. But cutting its funds?? It's stupid.
PS: another point, UNO scientific organs really are just the sum of their individual countries' parts. It should not, it should be larger and better than its parts, but that's just not the case. Their is no "WHO laboratory" etc, there are just specialists from participating countries that share their own labs data (or not). To change that, it would need more funding (not less!) to own its own labs, facilities, research programs, etc.
Curious question: what does the WHO do with all of the funding it gets? It receives funding from many nations and individuals, in no small amount. If it doesn't have labs to do testing... What exactly does it do with that funding?
After searching on WHO site, it seems that they do surveys of each countries health system, and pushing them to develop steady healthcare systems, and to adapt their practices to available medical knowledge. The pushing of WHO to develop healthcare available including to the poorest may have been what Trump disliked, after all.
The WHO seems to compensate partly for the absence of universal healthcare in the poorest countries, by direct investment.
I suspect that it is also directed towards communication and information. Like teaching the developping world the known techniques to mitigate malaria, the primary hygienic gestures's importance (like using soap to wash hands), etc. And of course the importance to have protected sex to fend off AIDS, etc. (which is an upstream battle given the religious and traditions resistance to many of these advises)
> And of course the importance to have protected sex to fend off AIDS, etc. (which is an upstream battle given the religious and traditions resistance to many of these advises)
Like when the Republicans wasted billions of dollars promoting abstinence as the solution to AIDS:
That's happens when launching one-sided projects from some particular country's ideology, instead of going through consensual WHO projects.
The AIDS projects from WHO would never dare consider abstinence. They already have the hardest job countering all the traditions and superstitions, even for the simplest thing as not to kiss the dead relatives, so how could they succeed in asking people not to have sex?
Interesting, thanks for the summary. I had no idea they did direct investment, though that seems like the only way to improve health in some parts of the world.
Imagine if the virus came along during the Hillary administration. The not-dismantled pandemic team [1] catches wind of the problems in Wuhan as early as the beginning of January, and informs the President as well as the WHO. The still-functioning State Department asks around in China and brings good information. As the WHO encounters resistance in China [2], the secretary of state makes phone calls and manages to negotiate permission for them to do their work there (who knows, maybe in reality Pompeo did this, but their track record makes me doubt that).
In this universe though, the Trump admin didn't contribute anything to the WHO (I'm assuming), and is now bitching and moaning that they were ineffective...
> Announcing the cut in funding on Tuesday, Trump accused the WHO of failing to send its experts to the source of the outbreak to gather samples. That failure decisively set back the effect to contain the pandemic, he claimed.
> In fact Beijing blocked a WHO delegation from visiting Wuhan in the first weeks of the outbreak. The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had to fly to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping on 29 January to negotiate entry and information sharing. A WHO team was allowed to visit Wuhan on 22 February.
"The World Health Organization adopted the German recipe for manufacturing kits sent to low-income countries without the resources to develop their own. The German recipe was published on 17 January 2020; the protocol developed by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was not available until 28 January, delaying available tests in the U.S."
So, a German lab found the test, and WHO helped manufacturing it in low-income countries.
But, as I said in another comment (only to be downvoted), the WHO is a sum of its participating countries. So everything the WHO finds is actually from some country's lab. That's just how WHO is made.
Interesting that the comments here aren't more critical of the decision.
Does the idea of improving the WHO by withholding money come from some kind of shared "starving the beast" logic or is it just a revenge kind of reflex that doesn't even have any positive expected outcome?
Eg the travel restrictions position[1], taken as an example in the article, appears to have been be defensible and a mainstream position in the field. It may turn out to be wrong or not in hindsight, like many things in this pandemic, but it's no reason to try to harm the organisation.
Especially that the WHO is just a sum of its participating countries, so removing its big US part will just make it weaker and that's it, nothing more.
Also, it they think the WHO was not good, the US should, as a huge contributor (which means bringing a lot of US experts and administrators to the organ), point to solutions to improve it. Deciding to cut the funds is completely illogical.
Quite surprised to see how many comments here agree with the decision.
It is quite clear that the WHO have to placate the CCP in order to avoid China withdrawing it's cooperation in its entirety. Yes, China has not been fully transparent, but it has been a significant improvement from SARS in 2003.
It seems many people here have bought into the reactionary blame game and failed to consider the diplomacy requirements of a group who need to cooperate with as many countries as possible to be effective.
Also, this move is 100% Trump deflecting attention from the narrative of his own mis-management. He doesn't care about WHO, he probably didn't even know it existed until a few weeks ago.
Also, this move is 100% Trump deflecting attention from the narrative of his own mis-management. He doesn't care about WHO, he probably didn't even know it existed until a few weeks ago.
Trump is an imbecile, and at best a useful idiot for Big Business, but that doesn't take away that the WHO has lost all credibility given how they have conducted themselves thus far. So, if nothing else I'm willing to say that he has done well by de-funding the US' portion of the WHO. What its replaced with is what the focus should really be, not Trump.
But, I'd go so far as to say that I hope this reduces the rest of the World's reliance on China once and for all as we have seen the perils it has caused, which incidentally has also been a narrative of his. Although that really hasn't come to fruition despite all the trade war rhetoric, so I'd say he has failed and not gone far enough.
Why not, we risk going back to the centralized pitfall once again if we don't right now; it won't be easy, but its very clear that the entire World is/will be falling into a deep recession, if not depression. I'd say if local manufacturing was ramped up then at least you could spur on local employment numbers.
Retraining people in this time is perhaps the most opportune as well as as they're confined at Home.
Also, I don't know how close you've been following the manufacturing of respirators or medical PPE in the US, but its like people finally realized 3d printers can be used for more than pointless affections and have been repurposed to be used for medical supplies equipment and tools and have brought out the best in what the 'maker space' could be under the guidance of actual Medical professionals.
There are guys on imgur who are reaching out to front liners to provide them with the equipment they can't get elsewhere at no cost.
Its a do or die situation for those so heavily reliant on them for medical supplies, quite literately, as untold deaths will go unaccounted for because China sent low quality or totally faulty equipment if it was even available to begin with. It will be brushed under the unavoidable cost of a pandemic--that has been made worse because the CCP censored, and disappeared anyone who sought to speak out on the severity of COVID19.
Which should have grave consequences internationally.
A lot of criticism here about the WHO. But what is the legal obligation of the United States to listen to anything the WHO says?
So what?
The virus is called COVID-19 for a reason. The virus was discovered in 2019. Each country can do their own thing.
Trump shut down international travel from China. He should have shut down travel from everywhere.
Once that virus was out of the bag, then it became impossible to stop. How do you stop something at the beginning, that you don’t even know exists? You can only try to slow it down. To isolate the infected. And to contain it.
But once an infected person leaves the border, then the virus will replicate in the next country. You only need one person to reach exponential growth.
The WHO even stated that they think the virus was building steam in all countries all over the world, and they were correct.
Here, it seems the politicians don’t understand biological science, and they don’t listen to their experts, and that they don’t understand what exponential growth is.
Further, the CDC refused to advise Americans to wear a mask, even a cloth mask to help reduce the transmission velocity of droplets. This was a bone-headed decision, that was entirely in the realms of control of the United States.
And then, the media keeps bringing up how China silenced an eye doctor, but what would this have done? Stop the virus? Doubtful, it was already building up steam in China. Make people more cautious, and wear a mask? Maybe, but local Chinese news TV were already advising that people be careful and vigilant, and wear a mask when outside. But not everyone was following that advice.
In contrast, what happened in New York, when rumors got out that the governor was shutting down the state? The result was that people fled to distant states! Some went to Rhode Island, and others went to Florida. Remember, all you need is one infected person to mess it up for everyone.
But really, I think what impacted the United States the most, was when Trump announced the travel ban from Europe. Everyone flocked home, and there were no health checks. The virus was already building up slowly, but this was the catalyst that accelerated it.
It was clear from the actions of the Chinese govt the seriousness of the situation regardless of what they said.
Mass quarantines for millions in a few cities and rapid shipment of medical equipment, personnel and the building of treatment facilities for the province.
You need to be a pretty piss poor govt to only base your preperations on WHO press releases or worse yet Chinese media reports.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 215 ms ] threadChina will offcourse make up the difference, and appropriately gain more influence. As it rightly should.
Easier to ignore the WHO if you don't give them any money.
Swapping in Trump and Kushner for WHO is not an improvement.
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china...
"Tedros, as he is called, said the WHO does not recommend limiting either trade or travel to China at this time. “In fact, we oppose it,” he said. The health organization said it would question border closures, quarantining of airplane passengers who aren’t ill, and similar steps."
This organization is either totally incompetent or complicit with spreading CCP propaganda. In fact, they reacted significantly slower than the US government.
South Korea never issued a travel ban.
In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country.
This is not true. A ban on a specific country cannot eliminate the risk but it can still slow the spread just like any mitigation.
there are plenty of models that quarantining the source only does not work. china even proved this. the initial quarantine of wuhan only was not working, so they had to expand it to everywhere. south korea showed testing and tracking worked better than shutting down travel.
the u.s. travel ban against china was ineffective. however, it will now continue indefinitely because the u.s. is in the middle of a shit show, and this will continue to harm people and businesses affected by the travel ban. it will add months if not years of delays to visa processing everywhere.
Either thing not happening (along with countless others) would have been best.
That's not all experts, though, many of them still wear their mask in front of the camera.
https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152
The WHO also isn't really doing anything on the ground (besides finger waving countries into giving them billions of dollars).
Their legacy is delay, confusion, misinformation, outright lies and incompetence.
I'm curious, how are you so certain about this?
The WHO had developed a test kit, was distributing it and was helping countries ramp up production at a time when the US was making a complete mess of testing. Many third world countries are heavily dependent on WHO expertise and support. This move is a knife in their backs.
Honestly, who has the best track record of tackling this issue and taking it seriously. The WHO, or a man who was calling it a hoax 6 weeks after the WHO had alerted of possible international transmission?
Taiwan, who the WHO regularly denies exists.
South Korea, whose success and strategies have been ignored.
This crisis has shown us the true face of the WHO: a primarily political organization with occasional work in medicine.
The WHO published summaries and support for the South Korean approach to the virus on 21 January, particularly highlighting their approach to testing and contact tracing and recommending similar approaches elsewhere. The WHO then started providing technical expertise to help countries set up testing and contact tracing systems, especially in poorer countries without that knowhow.
What was Trump doing, was he setting up a G20 summits to co-ordinate the global response like George Bush did during the financial crisis in 2008? Taking a role of global leadership? Nope, more than 5 weeks later while the WHO was leading efforts to track and contain the virus, Trump was still calling the whole thing a hoax at a mass rally in the US.
Trump can throw blame wherever he likes, you can pick nits in the activities of organisations that have been at the forefront of actually tackling this crisis. Whatever. But de-funding the WHO right now is a disgusting and reprehensible attack on the world's ability to tackle this crisis, from a country that was instrumental is setting up and running the WHO and it's predecessors for more than 100 years.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/bill-gates-who-most-powerful...
https://www.trendsmap.com/twitter/tweet/1248480455826870282
https://exposingvaccinegenocide.org/bill-gates-pedophile-sca...
I wonder what else they practiced.
Apparently, promoting vaccines according to your source. How villainous!
That is a very clearly labeled photo of recipients of the 2001 Carnegie mlMedal of philanthropy. Meaning all of those people were called to a location in NY to receive an award for work they did in philanthropy. It doesn't in anyway imply they had a prior connection, or were best friends or are conspiring together. They all got an award on the dame day. It like even the least bit of critical thinking is abandoned for grasping at the absurd.
Everytime I see stuff like this I think of the reporting of the people in SE Asia who were making boatloads of money creating fake news sites last election. One quote from his interview that sticks with me is he said he would just make stuff up, the more absurd the better - the more it would spread as long as it had a few trigger words in it. But always target Republicans, Democrats never share it, but Republican conspiracies is where the money is.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Medal_of_Philanthro...
Edit: To counter your point, there is a connection between Fauci and Gates.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/8/anthony-fauc...
bahahahahaha
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
you should read the guidelines because i find your newly created username to be disturbing.
According to Merriam-Webster[1]:
«proactive» · acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes
[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proactive
What they did these last months should be the last nail in the coffin.
More like a health organization they act like a political one taking sides with China and ignoring/censoring Taiwan even if they managed to control de spread of the virus.[1][2]
And if that wasn't enough, they actively insisted that all the measures we're taking now were pointless.
Why would anyone want a health organization that only cares about politics?
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/28/taiwan-who-coronavirus-... [2] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/taiwan-who-coronavir...
After all, the WHO Director-General claimed within the last week without a shred of evidence that he was subject to racist and derogatory attacks from Taiwan's leaders.
This is after WHO threw Taiwan under the bus and denied them access to critical health information on the express orders from China.
The entire organization is corrupt. Blindly repeating CCP propaganda and punishing China's enemies is not the sign of a healthy organization.
Their recommendations were, at times, completely false.
I see a lot of these deformed affirmations...
The China "results" were actually biased, so Taiwan was right to ask verification, but that's only retrospectively. At the time, there was no such certainty of their wrongdoing, especially given that they also collaborated by other means.
The reason you didn't find much is that the WHO refused to pass on Taiwan's warning.
Taiwanese doctors had direct emails from multiple colleagues in Wuhan, some of whom were punished by the local government for speaking. Doctors getting sick with the virus was direct evidence of human to human transmission.
Keep in mind that China also covered up and denied the existence of SARS for months. The WHO's decision to aid in suppressing the information of the epidemic has cost the entire globe countless lives and economic damage. What is it that so motivates you to defend them that you comment 20 times in this thread?
FWIW, I've followed the news this time and during SARS from the start, from local media in Taiwan and been deeply disappointed with the WHO and early international reporting both times.
Also, I like supra-national bodies. They warrant that the non-zero sum game that is our planet and societies still live on...
PS: did Taiwan try to pass the warning directly? They could have published through other ways, Twitter being only one among numerous examples. This is a sincere question, not a trap.
The crucial contribution the WHO made was forcing the Chinese to revise their reporting system and publish accurate infection counts in mid January. They could only do that once they had a team on the ground working with the Chinese and that required Chinese cooperation. Up to that point they and we were utterly reliant on China for information.
Of course everybody benefits from the existence of an organ like WHO, the only problems would be the number and quality of its experts network and labs. And to reform that, that's in the opposite direction of stopping funds...
Give it a week. Two at the most. You’ll see changes at the headline level.
It is right that WHO should have waited more verification of scientific data before publishing easily misinterpreted too-short statements, on Twitter or elsewhere. But look who is denouncing that.
Why? Does it do anything beyond encourage groupthink? What does it do that other organisations cannot?
From a life long Conservative voter here in the UK, this is serious. Get a grip. I never thought Trump was funny, but _nobody_ is laughing any more. US Republicanism needs to face up to the fact it took a badly wrong turn with this guy.
Wouldn’t you want to defund any organization that makes a problem worse?
Not true. Taiwan had already warned them of human to human transmission in December. The WHO's failure to report it has cost the world many lives and a great deal of suffering: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/03/25/2...
Well, you're right that physicians directly emailing other physicians is a good source for being cautious about China declarations, especially under an authoritarian government not allowing other forms of publications.
But still, from the point of view of WHO, it was not clear that there was such a pressure on experts. They only had China's studies in hands.
PS: well, maybe there was something more political going on. You seem well documented and I believe you. But they had to play with China on their side. Changing that means huge reforms, of not only WHO but UN. And reforms, not deletions...
In an outbreak situation, the correct response is NOT to say, "until you've published a study we'll tell the world there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission". If multiple doctors are getting sick from their patients, there IS evidence of human-to-human transmission.
If those doctors are in an authoritarian country that controls the flow of information, but they've emailed their colleagues abroad, that information itself must be shared by any responsible health organization.
Did Taiwan try to publish directly? On social media or other.
cite please.
This is classic Trump. Instead of taking effective action, he’s picking a fight because he knows his supporters will rally round, his opponents will be enraged and now it’s a partisan bun fight. De-funding the WHO is an appalling attack on the worlds ability to fight this pandemic. What is Trumps plan to actually help solve this problem?
Ah, this is a typical conservative response. "The government responded ineffectively!" they will say, to which the only possible response is to simply start dismantling government institutions and replace them with their corporate friends.
Then, when the next crisis occurs, and the even further weakened public institutions struggle to respond, they can remind us that they were right all along - it is the institutions that have failed us! Etc etc, into the downward spiral.
"Starve the beast" is not a strategy that can possibly result in reform, and I have trouble believing that anybody advocating it believes it in good faith.
This is all bullshit that Trump (and his self certified visionary crew) want people to focus on, so no one really asks what useful outcomes have the Whitehouse actually produced over the last 4 years? I cant see one thing.
> It is an open secret among international diplomats and public health experts that WHO is “not fit for mission” (as one of them put it to me), riddled with politics and bureaucracy. Given its previous failures and the warning that was Sars, its leadership has no excuse for reacting so oddly, and so tardily, to the current crisis.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/who-must-answer/
Perhaps. However, Trump's using the WHO as scapegoat for his grievous mishandling of the situation - starting in 2018 - is beyond unscrupulous.
Also, how is Trump responsible for Italy and Spain? Or are you so xenophobic that you believe that only the US could possibly have handled this for them? Italy and Spain listened to the WHO and they suffered and continue to suffer because of it. Trump didn't completely listen to the WHO and saved lives. Now, maybe he should have closed things down earlier and followed the Taiwan and South Korea models, but those countries did well because they didn't listen to the WHO and knew China was lying because of the last flu outbreak.
Do I think Trump is doing A+ work, no, but I can see that the US is doing much better than many other countries. And when you say that Trump is doing a bad job, you do realize that there are teams of people working on this. So you are saying that everyone who's working on this crisis is mishandling everything? If it's only Trump, what do you think he did wrong? You might say he downplayed the pandemic, but everyone did. And if you think that, what should he have said? It's easy to use hindsight and say people did these things wrong. I think everyone is doing the best they can.
I'm really tired of seeing this criticism with no evidence and with other countries that clearly did a worse job. I don't think it's fair to blame the leaders of those other countries either, when it's pretty clear that China and the WHO deserve a lot of the blame.
The WHO is not a scapegoat, they are directly responsible for thousands of deaths, and untold suffering. They may have done it because of their close ties to China, and they may have believed what they were saying, but at this point would you trust anything they say?
To solve that, a reform is needed. But absolutely not by cutting its funds, which is silly.
The exact quote was: "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test."
Also, being able to test anybody who asks it would have dismissed arbitrary criteria that are pushed by governments around the world to minimize the illness. For example in the country where I am, it was until recently difficult to get tested unlike there was an established contact with a tested positive person.
Maybe a country has 1000 tests on hand, they test that first 1k people and can say they followed the WHO's advice. That's all that was possible given their immediate stock.
My fav useless tweet from WHO is "there's no evidence human human transmission". I mean, if you don't know for sure, then let's not announce it.
As far as I know, most countries are ramping their testing facilities as fast as possible, some are just more effective or had a head start.
You do realize you linked to a January 14th tweet by the WHO stating:
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.
What exactly did they do?
I think that was the point. They didn't do anything of real substance, so was it better than doing nothing?
To me, it appears equivalent to doing nothing, and that's not better than doing nothing...
Yes easily misinterpreted short-phrased tweets are bad. Thanks to US president, we learned that.
They published a status of non-knowledge, easily misinterpreted. And sometimes later they published more alarmist statuses. It is quite normal to be wrong sometimes, even in science-related establishments.
I was just responding to the comment above mine, which asked "what did they do", and tried to show that was probably the point the poster above that was making.
As to the main topic? I mostly think this is just more petty distraction, deflection, and pointing fingers. But, I do think it's worth considering what the WHO's purpose is and whether or not it's serving that purpose sufficiently. As to how I feel about cutting funds, I'm not sure yet...
The equivalent yet still factually correct statement is "covid maybe transmits between humans". When you add uncertainty to a statement, it becomes factually correct.
In this case, doing nothing would have been better.
> While the WHO was obliged to report on the latest findings of a member state at the source of the outbreak, its officials told their counterparts in technical briefings on 10 and 11 January, and briefed the press on 14 January, that human-to-human transmission was still a strong possibility given the experience of past coronavirus epidemics and urged suitable precautions.
> [Gavin Yamey, the director of Duke University’s center for policy impact in global health] said it was ridiculous to point to a single tweet early in the pandemic as the fixed position of the WHO. “The whole point of science is that we have initial hypotheses and initial ideas, and we update those ideas as more and more data emerges,” he said.
(From https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/trump-turns-...)
If orgs/people are punishable due to single tweets, how do you rate Trump's performance? He has several tweets that contributed to 25K deaths..
Cut his funding!
It was certainly better than Trump calling the disease a hoax concocted by the his political opponents including the media, so whatever problems WHO may have on COVID-19 response, Donald Trump is in no position to criticize.
An example, WHO really said:
"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission"
which is realistic and prudent. But in this thread an in every other place on internet, it is interpreted by US people as:
"there is no human-to-human transmission"
which is downright crazy.
Also, I see a lot of mixing with Taiwan issues, even though the particular data about the pandemics in this country (and yes I am in favor of Taiwan independence, but that does not matter, and that's my point) did not change at all the scientific and public health conclusions and advises to be taken. In other words, to do their public health job, the WHO had absolutely no need to quote Taiwan in particular. Of course they also considered not angering China and so refrained to speak of Taiwan because of that too, but it would be the same for any of the UNO Security Council countries' delicate issues, including US.
If WHO was to be rebuilt upon better bases, everybody would benefit from it. But cutting its funds?? It's stupid.
PS: another point, UNO scientific organs really are just the sum of their individual countries' parts. It should not, it should be larger and better than its parts, but that's just not the case. Their is no "WHO laboratory" etc, there are just specialists from participating countries that share their own labs data (or not). To change that, it would need more funding (not less!) to own its own labs, facilities, research programs, etc.
The WHO seems to compensate partly for the absence of universal healthcare in the poorest countries, by direct investment.
I suspect that it is also directed towards communication and information. Like teaching the developping world the known techniques to mitigate malaria, the primary hygienic gestures's importance (like using soap to wash hands), etc. And of course the importance to have protected sex to fend off AIDS, etc. (which is an upstream battle given the religious and traditions resistance to many of these advises)
Like when the Republicans wasted billions of dollars promoting abstinence as the solution to AIDS:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/05/03/4766011...
The AIDS projects from WHO would never dare consider abstinence. They already have the hardest job countering all the traditions and superstitions, even for the simplest thing as not to kiss the dead relatives, so how could they succeed in asking people not to have sex?
This is like saying the governors should be ceding control to the federal administration.
In this universe though, the Trump admin didn't contribute anything to the WHO (I'm assuming), and is now bitching and moaning that they were ineffective...
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/trump-turns-...:
> Announcing the cut in funding on Tuesday, Trump accused the WHO of failing to send its experts to the source of the outbreak to gather samples. That failure decisively set back the effect to contain the pandemic, he claimed.
> In fact Beijing blocked a WHO delegation from visiting Wuhan in the first weeks of the outbreak. The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had to fly to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping on 29 January to negotiate entry and information sharing. A WHO team was allowed to visit Wuhan on 22 February.
"The World Health Organization adopted the German recipe for manufacturing kits sent to low-income countries without the resources to develop their own. The German recipe was published on 17 January 2020; the protocol developed by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was not available until 28 January, delaying available tests in the U.S."
So, a German lab found the test, and WHO helped manufacturing it in low-income countries.
But, as I said in another comment (only to be downvoted), the WHO is a sum of its participating countries. So everything the WHO finds is actually from some country's lab. That's just how WHO is made.
http://archive.is/mhfp8
Does the idea of improving the WHO by withholding money come from some kind of shared "starving the beast" logic or is it just a revenge kind of reflex that doesn't even have any positive expected outcome?
Eg the travel restrictions position[1], taken as an example in the article, appears to have been be defensible and a mainstream position in the field. It may turn out to be wrong or not in hindsight, like many things in this pandemic, but it's no reason to try to harm the organisation.
[1] "Evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations" in February, https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/updated-who-re...
Also, it they think the WHO was not good, the US should, as a huge contributor (which means bringing a lot of US experts and administrators to the organ), point to solutions to improve it. Deciding to cut the funds is completely illogical.
It is quite clear that the WHO have to placate the CCP in order to avoid China withdrawing it's cooperation in its entirety. Yes, China has not been fully transparent, but it has been a significant improvement from SARS in 2003.
It seems many people here have bought into the reactionary blame game and failed to consider the diplomacy requirements of a group who need to cooperate with as many countries as possible to be effective.
But, I'd go so far as to say that I hope this reduces the rest of the World's reliance on China once and for all as we have seen the perils it has caused, which incidentally has also been a narrative of his. Although that really hasn't come to fruition despite all the trade war rhetoric, so I'd say he has failed and not gone far enough.
Retraining people in this time is perhaps the most opportune as well as as they're confined at Home.
Also, I don't know how close you've been following the manufacturing of respirators or medical PPE in the US, but its like people finally realized 3d printers can be used for more than pointless affections and have been repurposed to be used for medical supplies equipment and tools and have brought out the best in what the 'maker space' could be under the guidance of actual Medical professionals.
There are guys on imgur who are reaching out to front liners to provide them with the equipment they can't get elsewhere at no cost.
Its a do or die situation for those so heavily reliant on them for medical supplies, quite literately, as untold deaths will go unaccounted for because China sent low quality or totally faulty equipment if it was even available to begin with. It will be brushed under the unavoidable cost of a pandemic--that has been made worse because the CCP censored, and disappeared anyone who sought to speak out on the severity of COVID19.
Which should have grave consequences internationally.
So what?
The virus is called COVID-19 for a reason. The virus was discovered in 2019. Each country can do their own thing.
Trump shut down international travel from China. He should have shut down travel from everywhere.
Once that virus was out of the bag, then it became impossible to stop. How do you stop something at the beginning, that you don’t even know exists? You can only try to slow it down. To isolate the infected. And to contain it.
But once an infected person leaves the border, then the virus will replicate in the next country. You only need one person to reach exponential growth.
The WHO even stated that they think the virus was building steam in all countries all over the world, and they were correct.
Here, it seems the politicians don’t understand biological science, and they don’t listen to their experts, and that they don’t understand what exponential growth is.
Further, the CDC refused to advise Americans to wear a mask, even a cloth mask to help reduce the transmission velocity of droplets. This was a bone-headed decision, that was entirely in the realms of control of the United States.
And then, the media keeps bringing up how China silenced an eye doctor, but what would this have done? Stop the virus? Doubtful, it was already building up steam in China. Make people more cautious, and wear a mask? Maybe, but local Chinese news TV were already advising that people be careful and vigilant, and wear a mask when outside. But not everyone was following that advice.
In contrast, what happened in New York, when rumors got out that the governor was shutting down the state? The result was that people fled to distant states! Some went to Rhode Island, and others went to Florida. Remember, all you need is one infected person to mess it up for everyone.
But really, I think what impacted the United States the most, was when Trump announced the travel ban from Europe. Everyone flocked home, and there were no health checks. The virus was already building up slowly, but this was the catalyst that accelerated it.
Mass quarantines for millions in a few cities and rapid shipment of medical equipment, personnel and the building of treatment facilities for the province.
You need to be a pretty piss poor govt to only base your preperations on WHO press releases or worse yet Chinese media reports.
Trump is just looking for a scapegoat as usual.