By Rich Lowry
Friday, April 10, 2020
China and the WHO worked together to expose the rest of
the world to the virus at the same time that they downplayed its dangers.
President Donald Trump slammed the World Health
Organization at a news briefing this week and was immediately accused of
scapegoating.
Peter Baker of the New
York Times tweeted that “Trump has found a new villain for the coronavirus
pandemic,” and The Guardian newspaper
described the president as “in an increasingly frantic effort to shift blame.”
There’s no doubt that Trump is inclined to shift blame
when possible (and even when it isn’t). He’ll never take ownership of the
testing debacle at the outset of our coronavirus response or admit it was wrong
initially to minimize the virus.
Yet none of this detracts from the force of his critiques
of China (although he blows hot and cold on that) and the WHO, which are at the
center of this international catastrophe and must be held to account.
Without China’s deceit and WHO’s solicitude for Beijing,
the outbreak might have been more limited, and the world at the very least
would have had more time to react. China committed unforgivable sins of
commission, affirmatively lying about the outbreak and punishing doctors and
disappearing journalists who told the truth, whereas the WHO committed sins of
omission — it lacked independence and courage at a moment of great consequence.
In effect, China and the WHO worked together to expose
the rest of the world to the virus at the same time that they downplayed its
dangers.
China acted as you’d expect. Countries that run gulags
aren’t typically noted for their good governance and transparency. The WHO is
supposed to be different. It says its values “reflect the principles of human
rights, universality, and equity.” According to its constitution, “The health
of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is
dependent on the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.”
But it’s hard to see how the WHO would have acted any
differently if its constitution contained a proviso stipulating that it should
validate Chinese propaganda as much as possible, especially in the midst of a
world-threatening outbreak of a novel virus.
On January 14, WHO tweeted that “preliminary
investigations” by Chinese authorities had found no evidence of human-to-human
transmission. Several days later, it reported “limited” human-to-human
transmission, although it downplayed the finding as typical of respiratory
illnesses.
Then the WHO declined to call the outbreak in China a
public-health emergency of international concern on January 22, at the same
time there were confirmed cases in Taiwan, Australia, Japan, Thailand, and
South Korea. After the WHO finally declared the emergency, it proceeded to drag
its feet on declaring a pandemic, waiting until March 12.
One of the worst things China did was seal off Hubei
province from the rest of the country while flights continued around the world.
Was the WHO concerned about that? No, it was fully on board. As a headline in
Reuters put it in early February, “WHO chief says widespread travel bans not
needed to beat China virus.”
Incredibly enough, in late January, WHO director-general
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was praising Chinese officials for “the transparency
they have demonstrated.” Despite the emerging consensus that China has lied
about its number of cases and deaths, WHO hasn’t yet said a discouraging word
about China’s actions.
It’s been resolute, though, in excluding Taiwan from its
workings, just as Beijing dictates. From a public-health perspective, this has it
exactly backward. Taiwan has proved quite adept at controlling outbreaks and
got this one exactly right, in large part because it didn’t believe anything
that China or the WHO said.
In a better world, Tedros would resign immediately, and
the U.S. would make its continued, ample funding of the organization dependent
on his departure.
Trump takes more than his share of potshots, but that
doesn’t mean he’s always off the mark. China and the WHO are genuine
malefactors who deserve all the obloquy the president, and anyone else, can
heap on them.
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