How the U.S. Can Rein in the World Health Organization

It has boosted China’s bogus coronavirus numbers as truth, among other problems.

By Daniel Vaughan

Apr 7, 2020

United States intelligence services have confirmed what many Americans already suspected. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is concealing the truth as to how bad the coronavirus, COVID-19, ravaged the country. U.S. intelligence also suspects that Iran, Russia, Indonesia, North Korea (currently reporting zero cases while sandwiched between China and South Korea), Saudi Arabia, and Egypt also have suspicious statistics.

Beyond those countries, however, sits a more concerning development: The World Health Organization (WHO) is boosting the official claims and numbers from these countries as truth. Amid a pandemic, while it percolated, the WHO pushed the narratives of authoritarian regimes, even when that narrative threatened people around the world. China hid the outbreak of COVID-19, manipulated its numbers, and at no point did the WHO question China or seek the truth.

There are many points of failure throughout the coronavirus pandemic. There are failures of the FDA and CDC and the regulations that delay U.S. response, there is the failure of the media to take the virus seriously early on, and then there are the failings of the president. But even when you adjust for all those failures—the World Health Organization, and its global failure, stand out. WHO hasn’t just failed to act. It’s made an active choice to protect authoritarian regimes like China even as the pandemic is taking lives around the world and doing incalculable damage to the global economy.

Given those facts, it’s time to look at U.S. funding of WHO, what that funding gets us, and what options are available to America.

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Sheva 3 years ago

Others have already noted this, but this piece is sorely lacking in copy editing. I love The Dispatch, and I expect more from you guys--putting this out full of typos makes the site look shoddy.

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

While understanding your point, as a start-up, there is a lot to be said for not letting the great (content plus editing) be the enemy of the good (content)....when getting information out quickly is highly valued. Having done a lot of personality profiles and having been under the guidance of executive coaches in my career, I am one of those people that gets caught up in analysis-paralysis. What get's me out of it is launching things (like newsletters) when they are 80% complete. Yes, I catch flack for misspelled words and the like, but I receive a lot more praise for thoughtful and insightful commentary.

Just a few thoughts to your otherwise valid critique.

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Frank Vergden 3 years ago

Great article just have two brief comments:

1) Funny thing about SARS: guess where the WHO directors during that period came from. Norway and, you guessed it, South Korea. When the head of your organization came to prominence as a high-level functionary of Ethiopia's EPRDF dictatorship, a regime that has a long history of covering up famines and epidemics, it seems hindsight is truly 20/20 there.

2) While I agree with some of the criticism regarding the naming of the virus, the naming is, as far as I know, not an issue Tedros is responsible for. Feel free to correct me if this is inaccurate, but my understanding is that around 2015, before Tedros took office, the WHO revised its guidelines for naming diseases to discourage the use of geographic names. Zika was accordingly one of the last new major diseases to have a location reference in its scientific name.

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Pat Riot 3 years ago

"United States intelligence services have confirmed what many Americans already suspected. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is concealing the truth as to how bad the coronavirus, COVID-19, ravaged the country."

You mean the United States intelligence services that give the president regular briefings and would have done so as early as December of 2019 on Covid? That United States intelligence services?

China lies all of the time and we know that. Their lies normally don't harm us because we have men and women who dedicate their lives to defending this country in our intelligence services. China's lies had no business hurting us here, but Trump made sure they finally did this time.

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

BTW, I need to make a mea culpa. My idiot Republican Party was at least as equally engaged in pork barrel like funding in that coronavirus relief package. I didn’t know. I should have known. Apologies for being dogmatically wrong.

And I just got it. Patriot. Sometimes, I’m a bit slow.

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

Is that a half-truth, Pat? Yes, the intelligence services were telling us something different than the WHO and China back in December, but that does NOT mean that people in December or January believed the pandemic was going to be as bad as it turns out to be. That includes almost everyone in the US medical/scientific community.

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Pat Riot 3 years ago

People in the medical/scientific community don't get daily classified briefings that include intel sourced from top-secret assets.

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

True... yet, Dr. Fauci said what he said in January....

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Pat Riot 3 years ago

Yep, they don't let CDC personnel in those briefings either unless the president specifically requests that.

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

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The below is from The New York Times article, "The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-10" (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html).

WHEN DID CDC LEADERSHIP KNOW ABOUT THE DISEASE:

"The first time Dr. Robert Redfield [he directs the CDC] heard about the severity of the virus from his Chinese counterparts was around New Year’s Day...."

INTERESTING FACTOIDS:
"On Jan. 7, the C.D.C. created an “incident management system” for the coronavirus and advised travelers to Wuhan to take precautions. By Jan. 20, just two weeks after Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of the virus, the C.D.C. had developed its own test, as usual, and deployed it to detect the country’s first coronavirus case."

"China provided limited data, and rebuffed an early attempt by Mr. Azar and Dr. Redfield to send C.D.C. experts there to learn more. That the virus could cause no symptoms and still spread — something not initially known — made it all the more difficult to understand."

"Dr. Robert R. Redfield, 68, a former military doctor and prominent AIDS researcher who directs the C.D.C., trusted his veteran scientists to create the world’s most precise test for the coronavirus and share it with state laboratories. When flaws in the test became apparent in February, he promised a quick fix, though it took weeks to settle on a solution."

"The C.D.C. gave little thought to adopting the test being used by the W.H.O. The C.D.C.’s test was working in its own lab — still processing samples from states — which gave agency officials confidence. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the agency’s principal deputy director, would later say that the C.D.C. did not think “we needed somebody else’s test.” [I am flabbergasted at the arrogance of this decision. That said, I believe it clearly illustrated that the CDC did not initially believe the virus was going to be as bad as it has turned out to be. CDC leaders are not stupid, even though they did something stupid.]

"The C.D.C. also tightly restricted who could get tested and was slow to conduct “community-based surveillance,” a standard screening practice to detect the virus’s reach."

"Dr. Stephen Hahn, 60, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, enforced regulations that paradoxically made it tougher for hospitals, private clinics and companies to deploy diagnostic tests in an emergency."

"Ironically, it was Mr. Azar’s emergency declaration that established the rules Dr. Hahn insisted on following. Designed to make it easier for drugmakers to pursue vaccines and other therapies during a crisis, such a declaration lets the F.D.A. speed approvals that could otherwise take a year or more. But the emergency announcement created a new barrier for hospitals and laboratories that wanted to create their own tests to diagnose the coronavirus. Usually, they faced minimal federal regulation. But once Mr. Azar took action, they were subject to an F.D.A. process called an “emergency use authorization.” Even though researchers around the country quickly began creating tests that could diagnose Covid-19, many said they were hindered by the F.D.A.’s approval process. The new tests sat unused at labs around the country."

"Alex M. Azar II, who led the Department of Health and Human Services, oversaw the two other agencies and coordinated the government’s public health response to the pandemic. While he grew frustrated as public criticism over the testing issues intensified, he was unable to push either agency to speed up or change course."

"But throughout February, as the C.D.C. test faltered, Mr. Azar became convinced that Dr. Redfield’s agency was providing him with inaccurate information about testing that the secretary repeated publicly, according to several administration officials."

MEDIA BIAS:
One last point. Read this comment at the tail end of the article referenced above:
"Previous presidents have moved quickly to confront disease threats from inside the White House by installing a “czar” to manage the effort.
During an outbreak of the Ebola virus in 2014, President Barack Obama tapped Ron Klain, his vice president’s former chief of staff, to direct the response from the West Wing. Mr. Obama later created an office of global health security inside the National Security Council to coordinate future crises. But faced with the coronavirus, Mr. Trump chose not to have the White House lead the planning until nearly two months after it began. Mr. Obama’s global health office had been disbanded a year earlier. And until Mr. Pence took charge, the task force lacked a single White House official with the power to compel action."

Now, if you're like me, you read that and it's damning as hell against the Trump administration. But because I don't trust anyone to present information with context, I decided to look up the timeline on the Ebola epidemic. It turns out that the outbreak was announced in March, 2014. By July of 2014, Liberia was closing borders because the disease was crossing invisible lines. So when did President Obama assign the Ebola Czar with such speed that The New York Times implies was so favorable? October 17, 2014. That is 7 months after the announcement and 3 1/2 months after things were serious.

Damn, that kind of thing angers the hell out of me. This is what destroys media credibility. And I want my "good" NEW YORK TIMES BACK!

Again, Trump is an ass, a narcissist, and a liar. He is no where near as good as he says he is. The thing is, I don't think he's as bad as they say he is either. As a factual matter, his administration had to deal with a brand new disease of much greater impact in a fraction of the time that Obama had to deal with Ebola.

But unless one researches things like I do, one would never know.

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Pat Riot 3 years ago

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

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Your logic makes sense, but it doesn't appear to match the time line expressed by the article. In no way do I want you to infer that I believe that Trump was actively monitoring that time line, but it is 100% true that people in the administration were actively working on responding to the disease in a reasonably timely way. Now, they clearly didn't think it was as dangerous in the early stages, but on what historical basis would anyone in the West think it deserved to be? I know you feel differently given that there were intelligence reports expressing concern. But I think it reasonable to think that intelligence reports are always expressing concern. We rank that risk - almost always - by what experience has taught us. That explains why Fauci - and the quotes from doctors at top medical schools around the country....who had contacts in China - were making comments in January/February expressing concern, but not alarm. Again, they are not idiots. The were simply wrong.

Nevertheless, people in the administration were doing many of the things that you would want them to do. The problem was that the agencies failed to execute. Regulatory roadblocks and rule followers.... which are important in times of calm.... were not violated or overthrown in a time of urgency. And yet, what I just wrote is not true in reasonable context. The rules were violated and the rule followers were replaced. It took 1 month (the month of February). While that month was enormously costly in terms of the impact of the disease, fixing those problems in a month is pretty damn good in nearly any large organization in America.

I am defending the administration, but not Trump.

I do not know if Trump is a complete idiot who has always discounted the danger of the virus... or if his style is simply always to exaggerate - up or down - an issue. I suspect he is deserving of "grace" in February.... and of political face-saving in March. No reason for you to agree.

What my critique of Trump has always been is his leadership. He doesn't think of things in a "we" are in this together kind of way. While that is a soft and fuzzy, it has ramifications on how he works with the legislature, his staff, other world leaders, etc. He's antagonistic as hell and that is destructive to social fabric and - as you rightly point out - the way people communicate with him. I don't KNOW that he lives in a bubble as you suggest - and because I don't KNOW, I am unwilling to assert that as true - but I 100% agree it is reasonable to believe it to be true.

Stay well.

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Pat Riot 3 years ago

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Bruce Wing 3 years ago

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Paul Reichardt 3 years ago

All governments and their political officials have incentive to downplay and lie about the statistics as to avoid crises of popular legitimacy or spook the markets. China wants to use the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate its global leadership role—for example, their effectiveness in flattening the contagion curve (anyone with any background in science who looks at the Chinese data will have their B.S. detector flashing bright red) and shipping (defective) testing protocols and kits to other nations. Spain got defective or unreliable kits, so did the UK. Even Iran, who desperately needs China, is skeptical. I don’t think too many people are being fooled. At this point, it doesn’t really impact how individual nations elsewhere should handle the pandemic domestically.

One can see how international organizations like WHO can get caught in these situations: they need the cooperation of the host countries to gain access to their subject experts and health data, but to some extent this requires “playing ball” with political leadership who will demand “favorable” assessments and public commentary in return. WHO doesn’t have much choice but to at least take the Chinese numbers at face value, at least publicly from the highest-level officials. Perhaps Tedros is a pro-China stooge, but he’s a politician just like any other—making the whole of WHO a political football in the US doesn’t help matters.

One hopes the lower-level subject experts have more latitude to work with their Chinese counterparts, who often are reputable and as competent and professional as anyone, in a less coersive environment. Maybe that’s just naïve, but WHO generally does good work in spite of the political pressures. Maybe in those hostage-tape scenarios when they’re quoting the great job China is doing, we can look for eyelid Morse code transmissions.

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John Q. Public 3 years ago

I understand the point about "playing ball" to get some level of buy-in from host countries, but at what point does the level of appeasement outweigh the benefits? I'd argue that we are approaching that point, if we have not reached it already.

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Richard Maxton 3 years ago

No, we passed that point a while back now. WHO shouldn't have to "play ball" for buy in. Buy-in should be come with membership (just like dues). And if the member doesn't live up to obligations, out they go. I can only hope that someone in Congress throws it out there. I'm not interested at all in WHO's take on politics. It should be a non-factor. China doesn't like that WHO references Taiwan? Irrelevant to the mission.
I don't like that so many companies have to toe the line with China in order to get in their markets, but at least I understand their thinking. Not that I excuse it. If American companies bent the knee to the USSR the way they do to the CCP we'd STILL be in the Cold War.
I don't understand what WHO gets from China that makes it necessary to toe the line.

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Carl Kraeff 3 years ago

"Logical" has posted numerous times to make the point that the U.S. Representative position on the Executive Board of the WHO is vacant. Good to know. Now, that knowledge and 25 cents may buy you a cup of coffee in the Cairo bazaar, as the of saying goes. The point remains: the WHO is effectively controlled by Red China.

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Logical 3 years ago

"seems to be vacant..." I have no further information, but trying to figure it out. If there is a problem at Vatican, it is a journalistic duty to talk to someone higher up at Vatican, before running to Ted Cruz.

You are welcome to join the ritual outrage. But I don't trust anything from a guy who is counting 16,000+ lies so far, and firing all the truth tellers around him.

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Logical 3 years ago

WHO is not some alien organization from planet Zork. We not only fund a big chunk of it, but are also a critical part of the Executive Board. This article is venting aimlessly ( always feels good to find a villain) and joined the bandwagon.

The author of this article should at least get one statement from our rep on the WHO board. I am NOT here advocating for WHO. I just refuse to be misinformed or gaslighted, especially in the era of Trump.

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John Q. Public 3 years ago

I agree that some kind of statement from WHO would have been ideal, but I hardly think that the lack thereof constitutes gaslighting or misinformation. The article extensively references WHO's public statements and actions.

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Logical 3 years ago

Sorry JQ. You still didn't get it. I don't care for a WHO statement. I want a statement from our (i.e, USA's) chief mumba at WHO, whom we are paying big bucks, to clarify.

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John Q. Public 3 years ago

Regardless, I don't think the lack of such a statement is a glaring omission. WHO's actions and statements over the last 5 months can speak for themselves, and I don't think a boilerplate statement from a WHO official will shed much more light on the entire situation.

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Logical 3 years ago

The most critical piece missing on this whole subject (in the entire coverage anywhere) is a dissenting statement on the Covid communique from the US rep on WHO Exec Board. Statements from Cruz, Rubio, Lee are cute, but frankly worth zilch.

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Stephanie 3 years ago

I just read this conversation several days late. I think the answer to your question is Alex Azar (name sound familiar?). At least, he headed the US delegation 2 years ago: https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/388666-hhs-secretary-to-head-us-delegation-at-world-health-assembly

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Stephanie 3 years ago

They meet again in May. The WHA is the decisionmaking body of the WHO.

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Logical 3 years ago

Stephanie, thanks.

We need the views of the US rep who must have been involved with the routine operation of the exec body, not a delegation. The mystery still remains who that is.

E g., if we have a problem with a communique from UN Sec. Gen., we call up our rep on the UN (was Niki Haley).

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Lou Stefanic 3 years ago

Love you guys, but there's a typo in the headline! Too many cans.

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Yogi4Four 3 years ago

Great reporting. And also I believe it should be rein, not reign.

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Logical 3 years ago

Yes, we keep WHO, UN, WTO, IMF, etc., afloat. Without our funding, they shrivel up and die.

But where we are to blame ourselves is that we gave up on them. We developed a contempt for any international organization where our word is not supreme. This contempt in turn undermines their effectiveness. A recent fine example is NATO.

We used to be good at this when we engaged in their operations with goodfaith, energy, assigning our best talent and kept the persuasion and vigor. Now, we are just cynical and act like victims. We send our representatives who expressly state how to make them ineffective or irrelevant.

As in any cooperative setting, you get what you put in; what you put in needs to be more than just money but a commitment and determination to stay engaged and fight for making things better. Also, it cannot be at the whim of the tribal leader occupying the WH.

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Nathan Shiba 3 years ago

So Logical, a couple of questions for you. (1) Do you believe that the WHO leadership is disseminating and lending credence to incorrect and inaccurate information from China on the number of COVID-19 cases? (2) If you do, do you believe that Trump and his administration is in any way culpable for the WHO leadership's dissemination of this incorrect/inaccurate information?

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Logical 3 years ago

NS,
US is a critical member of the WHO executive committee. Can you name who he/she is and what he/she has done in the course of the current events?

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Nathan Shiba 3 years ago

Let's assume no US member of the WHO Executive committee has done anything of value.

So, (1) Do you believe that the WHO leadership is disseminating and lending credence to incorrect and inaccurate information from China on the number of COVID-19 cases? (2) If you do, do you believe that Trump and his administration is in any way culpable for the WHO leadership's dissemination of this incorrect/inaccurate information?

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Logical 3 years ago

Do you know how the WHO executive board works? Do you know how the board makes decisions? Do you know if Trump even appointed a competent individual to the board? Do you know if there is a dissension from the US rep on the communique re the COVID 19?

Start digging my friend. Don't be gaslighted.

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Nathan Shiba 3 years ago

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Logical 3 years ago

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Nathan Shiba 3 years ago

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