As the Wuhan Virus seems to be playing out, with fewer infections, fewer deaths, and fewer hospitalizations in most places, the United States and other nations begin to resume normal operations. There will be fits and starts, and the same governors and government officials who made arbitrary and capricious decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete information to shut down their economies are likely to make arbitrary and capricious decisions in opening them back up. Residents of Pennsylvania can take a perverse kind of pride in knowing that our Governor has been one of the most arbitrary and capricious ones out there, but even he is acknowledging that eventually, business and other activities might resume.
As the Wuhan Virus seems to be playing out, with fewer infections, fewer deaths, and fewer hospitalizations in most places, the United States and other nations begin to resume normal operations. There will be fits and starts, and the same governors and government officials who made arbitrary and capricious decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete information to shut down their economies are likely to make arbitrary and capricious decisions in opening them back up. Residents of Pennsylvania can take a perverse kind of pride in knowing that our Governor has been one of the most arbitrary and capricious ones out there, but even he is acknowledging that eventually, business and other activities might resume.
We have been extremely critical of the communist Chinese government for its mishandling of this crisis from its inception until now, but there is another party whose bad decisions, poor advice, and politically-motivated statements have tended to amplify the problem. We are referring to the World Health Organization.
Back in May of 2017, when Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected to head the WHO, there were many voices raised in opposition. (For what it is worth, Dr. Tedros is a “doctor” in much the same way that Dr. Jill Biden is a doctor. Both possess the honorific because of their academic degrees. Neither of them are medical doctors. Jill Biden’s degree is in Education – although that didn’t prevent Whoopi Goldberg from touting her as an “amazing doctor” and pushing for her to be named Surgeon General. Tedros has a Ph.D in Community Health.) At the time, it was noted that Tedros was a leader in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, an offshoot of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. He did serve that nation as Health Minister from 2005 to 2011, during which time Ethiopia had at least three serious outbreaks of cholera – except Dr. Tedros would not call it cholera even after cholera bacteria were detected. He referred to it as “acute watery diarrhea.” Thousands of Ethiopians died. Changing the name didn’t lessen the impact of the outbreak, but it did lessen the impact that the outbreak had on the world’s press.
We suspect that Dr. Tedros had a similar motivation when he was outraged that President Trump and others described the coronavirus outbreak with terms referring to China or Wuhan – he wanted to lessen the publicity of the outbreak, more so than its severity. And the tireless bureaucrats of WHO who battle diseases around the world “routinely spend $200 million a year on travel expenses, more than what [the WHO] doles out to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined” according to an Associated Press report from 2017. Travel expenses from 2013 to 2017 exceeded $803 million. That’s a significant slice for a group with an annual budget of around $4 billion. But, almost all UN organizations waste a lot of money, and the US government itself certainly can’t be called “thrifty,” can it?
No, the problem with the WHO isn’t lavish travel expenses, but instead its motives of political correctness, to be protective of Third World governments it favors, particularly those of a Marxist bent, no matter how dismally they may perform in a given epidemic; and its reluctance to call them to account – particularly the Chinese government in the current coronavirus pandemic. And when WHO, passing along “information” from communist China, said in January that there is no evidence for person to person transmission of coronavirus, who could be surprised when governments believed them? The WHO publicly opposed nations who chose to close their borders and to restrict travel from coronavirus “hot spots,” and by doing so they placed politics and sensibilities above public health.
Back in the 2010 Swine Flu epidemic, WHO overestimated the risk, and was accused of raising a panic about the severity of the disease. WHO was even “confused” about the vaccine itself, which conveyed immunity after only one dose, instead of the two doses that WHO believed were required. These factors caused the stockpiling of vaccines that never were used, even as over 18,000 people were killed. Of course, we should not think that agencies or governments will respond perfectly to any crisis. None did in dealing with the current Wuhan Virus outbreak; but when the “expert” agencies are consistently incorrect, or when their interests are more political than professional, it is time to give serious scrutiny to their public statements, to their leaders, and to their budgets.
The Trump administration has put a hold on the unspent portion of the $440 million annually donated by America to the WHO. As with most United Nations agencies, the United States is the largest contributor. The hold on funds is controversial, and the Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden never would make such a move. China, which has been given no reason to be upset with WHO, has rushed to expand its donation to WHO by some $40 million or so. That should tell us all we need to know.
WHO continues to spout questionable advice. Just this weekend, they issued a statement saying “there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.” This seems to fly in the face of those hospitals that are taking plasma from recovered victims in order to use them to convey immunity, and also goes against the results of every other coronavirus outbreak, which saw immunity from second infections in almost every case. WHO shortly revised its original statement, and now says, “We expect that most people who are infected with Covid-19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection.” That is about 100% opposite from what WHO said just a few hours earlier. That is because the first statement was political in motivation, aimed at governments who were considering “immunity passports” and the like. If WHO doesn’t think that is a good idea, they could say so – without pretending that the last couple of hundred years of research and experience in dealing with viruses is no longer valid.
Of course, WHO did not cause the current pandemic, but by its unquestioning acceptance of everything China has said or done about coronavirus it has hampered the response from almost every other government in the world.
Here is some more “big news,” although perhaps it should be believed at one’s own risk. The Chinese government on April 26 declared that “the number of new coronavirus patients in Wuhan was at zero” and all patients have been discharged. Amazing, and remarkable, that they could achieve something than has been achieved nowhere else. In Europe and the United States, there still is talk that it might not be safe to reopen until 2021. We can’t wait to hear what WHO says about this latest news from China.