How the WHO Can Earn Back U.S. Support

In a global pandemic, an impartial, science-oriented, competently led, transnational health organization is vital. There ...

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In a global pandemic, an impartial, science-oriented, competently led, transnational health organization is vital. There is no better way to prevent, detect, and aid in coordinating a global response to infectious diseases that have pandemic potential. Millions of lives depend on it.

But an organization that is overly deferential to one nation — the People’s Republic of China, for example — is incapable of being an honest broker, and costs the very lives it is intended to save. That is why the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, and why, with the right reforms, it can rejoin.

The WHO failed at its most critical moment. Pressure from Beijing led Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to echo Chinese misrepresentations of the nature of the threat from COVID-19. Tedros also stifled alarms about Beijing delaying a visit by a WHO technical team, concealing vital details regarding transmission, and failing to share critical multigeneration virus samples.

Most recently, the WHO changed its timeline on COVID-19 to clarify that the organization first found out about the disease from online sources, not the Chinese government, as previously claimed. This raises questions about the accuracy of other WHO statements. Indeed, despite internal frustration at the WHO over Beijing’s lack of transparency and cooperation, Tedros praised China repeatedly out of fear that criticism could further undermine Beijing’s limited cooperation.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Robert Knudson

    Informative article.
    In fairness to the Director General, the US Government appears to have been taking the Chinese at their word through at least late February as well.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Poliorcetes

    Slight digression. I made a Covid safety video for my child's teachers. Based on my ER experience with Covid for past 5 months, only one nurse and no doctors got covid. Boring but practical advice if you work in crowds. I am a board certified ER doctor.
    https://youtu.be/sZcNDllijrI

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      Victor Clairmont

      Thank you for your hard work!

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    2. P Satter

      Informative video, although did need to speed it up a bit. You add eye protection which makes sense in a medical setting, but has not really been emphasized or required outside of that. May I ask, is that something your children's schools are requiring for teachers?

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      1. Avatar photo
        Poliorcetes

        Eye protection has been recommended. And there are studies showing theoretical protective value. I notice Dr. fauci began talking about eye protection last week. None of this is required by the school, in fact the school is going by the outdated CDC recommendations that emphasize surface cleaning and plain droplet protection (plastic shields). They are still supposedly planning on doing lunch inside on a low ceiling room with poor ventilation, counting on plastic dividers for infection control. Which I have told them is insane and is one reason I made the video. It's actually just converted PowerPoint presentation with 30 sec delay. But video is easiest to share. But yeah, the slow spread drives me crazy but my wife insists some people need that time to fully comprehend.

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        1. P Satter

          Thanks. Saw Dr. Fauci and WebMD recommended, but has not trickled down to our state recommendations. If classroom has high ceilings and typical large school windows that open for ventilation, it's too bad they couldn't just make arrangements to bring the lunch to the classroom and have them eat there--less group interaction, too.

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            Poliorcetes

            Very true.
            And the glasses are probably the least important, masks and hand washing are critical. My goal is to give people the info and they can decide what level of protection suits them.

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    Nick H

    I'm curious how making the HEP an independent group reporting to the WHO executive steering committee will isolate it from pressure by nations wanting to hide a pandemic. In the short term that might work, getting the pandemic specialists out from under Tedros, but what's to stop China and other countries from exerting pressure on choosing the future leadership of HEP the way that they influenced the selection of Tedros? Over time won't they corrupt HEP in just the same manner as WHO was corrupted? Cutting out a layer of bureaucracy is a temporary solution. Just like a weed, the bureaucracy will always grow back.

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      Tyler

      I was thinking the same thing reading this. It does seem useful, though, to provide bureaucratic distance, especially if it's cumbersome to replace the HEP leadership. Typically, the political leadership ignores the bureaucrats until there is a crisis and then starts trying to pressure them on a very short timetable. Similar to how there's actually not _that_ much Trump can do to Fauci, there should be limited retaliatory options offered to WHO leaders against HEP members. Sure, over time there will be a desire to politicize everything, but there also won't be much political pressure put on the actual scientists until there's a crisis. The goal should be to introduce so much structural friction that the political leadership is helpless to make rapid changes at the lower levels of the bureaucracy.

      The worst aspect of the WHO's behavior is that Tedros rolled over _immediately_ along with other poltroons like Bruce Aylward. If their influence over the people who actually do the work could have been slowed even just by a few months, things would have turned out completely differently.

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    DougAz

    This is one of the BEST ever Dispatch articles.

    Why?

    Problem Solving and Solutions.
    Need more of this. Good job

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    1. Scroop Moth

      The purpose of the article is to propose a face-saving way for Republicans to rejoin the W.H.O. The problem is Trump’s overreaction and need for misdirection. It speaks volumes that no other country withdrew. Pletka and Schaefer assert a bunch of alleged derelictions that are already pending investigation and will be assessed and acted upon by the Assembly. Turning W.H.O. into a cop with an antagonistic relationship with a member nation strikes me as counterproductive. Changing the HEP chain of command looks like window dressing, but, who knows, the Assembly might already be contemplating such a move. Trump is disproportionately mistreating the W.H.O. in order to deflect blame from himself.


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        DougAz

        Good points as no other nation has withdrawn. And every other nation except maybe Britain, has achieved better Health and Economic outcomes than Trump with the same WHO.

        Still - some problem solving is good..

        Still - we will be back in the WHO after the Biden-Harris swearing in..

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    2. Avatar photo
      Jake

      Articles like this need more attention. Punditry gets the other Dispatchians lots of comments but this stuff is more valuable.

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  5. Scroop Moth

    But what does Trump’s withdrawal from the W.H.O. say about him? W.H.O. can’t get all up in China’s face — any more than in Trump’s face.

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      Victor Clairmont

      I actually am fine with the withdrawal. If we pay the most the most in donations to WHO out of any country we have no obligation to fund an organization that sided with China.

      WHO needs us more than the world needs WHO at the moment. Sad. Because again, decades ago they did good work.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Hmmm...perhaps we should just scrap WHO and create a new organization. Using only 20% of its budget for actual pandemic stuff, means it is a financial disaster of waste. Shame, it did decades ago actually help eliminate some terrible afflictions on humanity. That, and WHO was originally created in an age that needed doctors world wide to communicate to each other what was going on in nations that had massive outbreaks. The internet actually replaces this function, as doctors can immediately let other people, government, and nations know what is happening on the ground without WHO, meaning doctors can function without WHO as an intermediary.

    Work with other nations and create something new. WHO should not be trusted as they have had multiple failures from leadership and it’s members.

    And lastly, Tedros must go down in flames. He parroted Chinese propaganda and when America put in its travel ban on Jan. 31st, when signs were pointing against what China was saying, Tedros said about the ban: It would “...have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.” He pick the CCP over the world. So perhaps we should let him, and the organization that did not stand up to him, face the consequences of their ineptitude.

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    1. Scroop Moth

      On Jan. 31, when Trump put up his “travel ban,” two US airlines had already suspended service and United was delaying an announcement so as to give Trump the stage to do it first. China had posted the genome. Hubei was on a brutal lockdown. Red Army had built a vast emergency field hospital and was planning a second. Asia was masked up. I was looking for masks. Trump had all the information and time enough to suppress the pandemic in the US.

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        Victor Clairmont

        China bought out our masks before then....And Australia’s....

        And this article is about the failures of WHOalso. If you want we can go through the last 6 months of US failure on all sides....

        Also, if you want to defend China for its response to their own created pandemic, you should probably add in the part where they welded people into buildings, just to open them up and find them dead later.

        And that they got doctors killed or silence that tried to break the Covid news.

        Or they knew about this back in November of last year.

        Or that they during this crisis have hidden all their death numbers and infection rates and continue to lie about it.

        Or that during this crisis they invaded India’s border.

        But sure, use they built a field hospital to score points. Asia masked up? Because they knew about this, lies to WHO and worldwide bought out PPE just to sell it back or donate it, pretending they did the world a service. Don’t fall for propaganda nonsense.

        I really don’t give a damn what China did. They created this whole catastrophe . The whataboutism here, just to knock the response in our country, is pretty terrible.

        Did I mention they have zero problems letting Uighurs get infected with Covid?

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      2. Mitchell

        Trump did not have enough time to suppress the pandemic. The time for containment was when the virus was in Wuhan, China - that's when shelter-in-place/lockdowns were absolutely vital and may have worked. But once people infected with the virus got on planes out of Wuhan and began traveling the world, containment was no longer a viable option for any single country; countries needed to move into managing the virus, not clinging onto the notion that containment was still possible. This would likely have saved many lives and potentially eradicated the virus much quicker than the delayed lockdown the U.S. implemented.

        At this point, COVID-19 is present almost everywhere in the world, including New Zealand. No country has succeeded in suppressing the virus, because once the virus left Wuhan suppression became virtually unattainable. Trump can be blamed for much, but his failure to somehow suppress the virus is, in my opinion, not a fair critique.

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        1. Scroop Moth

          In epidemiology, suppression means minimizing transmission until a vaccine is developed, through measures like testing and contact tracing, distancing, masks. It’s more aggressive than mitigation, which involves protecting the aged, for example. Eradication may be out of reach, even with a vaccine. China “suppressed” the virus to below 100 per day by mid March. There was a recent spike of 57 cases in a day. All Trump had to do was copy China.

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        Logical

        I do agree that WHO needs a full audit snd scrubbing; so does every institution. But that is independent of how US handled the pandemic after all the necessary facts are known. Let's us not allow WHO's issues provide the cover for Trump's incompetency.

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