At Newsweek Jason Lemon reports that a group of “international policy experts and politicians” have penned an open letter criticizing China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic:
A group of international policy experts and politicians strongly criticized China’s government in an open letter about its coverup and mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, referring to the botched response as a “Chernobyl moment.”
The letter was published Tuesday on the website of Canada’s Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a national public policy think tank based in Ottawa. It was signed by more than 100 policy experts, lawmakers and academics who hail largely from North America, Europe and Oceania.
“While the exact source and spread of the virus are not clear yet the question of origin is highly important, for the people of China and for all humankind: only by understanding how this global disaster could emerge we can prevent it from happening again,” the letter argued.
It went on to say that the origins of the global pandemic “are in a cover-up by CCP [Chinese Communist Party] authorities in Wuhan, Hubei province.”
To my eye there were few if any Americans among the signatories but they did appear to be notable neoconservatives. I do not believe this will be the last such declaration. It may well turn out that SARS-CoV-2 will be the least of China’s problems. As one commentator noted, the CCP has taken an axe to their own business model.
I think China merits a lot of criticism. Hopefully we do that in some meaningful way other than whine about it. Which is why I still dont understand the ire directed at WHO, other than it serves as a group to blame other than our own politicians. I was looking at their numbers. Their annual budget is about the same as a large hospital, a bit larger than ours. With that budget they conduct programs all over the world. It seems pretty clear to me that when there is an outbreak of disease in any country they need to rely upon wha officials in that country tell them. They dont have the resources to send lots of people anywhere in an emergency and they dont have the power, as far as I can tell, to force a sovereign nation to give them access.
So just as they wouldnt let our people in to help/study the disease, the WHO was not able, and we both initially relied upon what China told us. AS far as I can tell WHO does not have an intelligence arm, so we should have had better information. So China clearly holds a lot of responsibility here, but our own shortfalls far outweigh anything done by WHO. Even the small African countries didnt let WHO in at first with the Ebola crisis. If we want WHO to really be able to get in fast on disease outbreaks we need to funs them to do so, then grant them the political power, including force if necessary, to act. I dont really see wither of those happening, so I just expect more finger pointing.
Steve
I hope Trump uses this crisis to force American and foreign companies to move their factories back to the US. Merely moving them to another country does the US economy and workers no good whatsoever.
If the WHO simply said — “sorry we don’t know much because the Chinese government is not sharing†or “sorry we don’t know muchâ€; then it was better then what happened.
They recommended against travel restrictions — supporting the Chinese governments line when the first restrictions were created. And WHO drops the travel restriction recommendation when the Chinese government imposes them on other countries after suppressing its own outbreak.
And WHO echoing the early Chinese line that coronavirus did not transmit between person to person.
What galls is WHO actually made the problem that is it’s raison d’être worse.
Trump did the same thing WHO did and praised them for their transparency. As I pointed out WHO does not have an intelligence arm. They are dependent upon what a host country tells them. China did share, they just didnt tell the truth. We at least have an intel service. Given that Trump did not really impose a travel ban, Americans could still fly back and forth, I am not seeing a whole lot of difference in opposing a ban and using a partial, ineffective one. If we are going to get rid of WHO we should get rid of Trump for doing the same things, only worse as I think we can presume he had intelligence about real conditions in China.
Query- How exactly was WHO supposed to know that the virus could be transmitted by human to human contact if they didnt have anyone in the country? How did they make things worse? Unless you want to give UN agencies real authority inside sovereign nations, imagine how that go over here, they will always be limited in what they can do inside any individual country. Imagine there was no WHO. We would have been dependent upon announcements from China and Trump. Up until March 16th everything was declared under control and everything they were doing was perfect.
Sorry, this is all still a way for Trump to blame someone else, one of the things he does best.
Steve
‘How exactly was WHO supposed to know that the virus could be transmitted by human to human contact if they didn’t have anyone in the country?’
Verify, then trust. The WHO just repeated China’s assertions without verification. China lied. Lots of people have died. Trite but true.
‘Imagine there was no WHO. We would have been dependent upon announcements from China and Trump.’
POTUS was privy to intelligence reports that informed him the no human-to-human assertion was BS. That’s why he set up the Coronavirus committee on 1/29/20 and imposed some travel restrictions 1/31/20. And of course was lambasted for it. The WHO basically became a shield of ‘expert authority’ his critics hid behind while lobbing threats, insults, and lies.
‘Sorry, this is all still a way for Trump to blame someone else, one of the things he does best.’
Just because he’s blaming China and the WHO for screwing up doesn’t mean they don’t deserve it. And they do, big time. At best IMO the WHO could be called a useful idiot organization.
On a more serious note, how are things in your hospitals? Things getting any better? How is the UV PPE irradiation project going? I’m glad you seem to be part of a relatively nimble and willing organization rather than some elephantine by-the-book firm. I’m sure a lot of people are still alive through your collective efforts.
Poverty kills more each year than CV 19.
You publicly humiliate yourself steve with your monotonic Trump bad commentary. Its partisan tripe. And irresponsible, not to mention juvenile. Trump’s biggest mistake has been to listen to the Fauci’s of the world. He has to own that. But he’s been ill served by “experts.” (snicker) The sooner he rids himself of these people as soothsayers the better.
I have as much or more science background as anyone here, but I’m not so stupid as to believe science has the answers for policy issues. “Science” is as corrupted as any field. Its a narrow and useful perspective. That’s all. WTFU people.
Whether the WHO praised China is a straw man — that was not why I am not satisfied with WHO’s response.
My complaint is they spread false info to all member countries when sharing info is one of their core missions.
If WHO don’t know — then just say so, like how most scientists usually couches a finding that there a lot of uncertainties. It is not like the WHO has not had experience with the Chinese government hiding the seriousness of an epidemic — lookup SARS.
There was significant investment into WHO, Chinese public health by Europeans and Americans after SARS to prevent a repeat. The fact we had a catastrophic repeat is a condemnation that speaks for itself.
“Verify, then trust. The WHO just repeated China’s assertions without verification. China lied.”
How? They don’t have people in China to do that. Idontthink that you have a feel for how small WHO actually is. They have an organization not much larger than the one I work in. They have most of their budget tied up in existing projects. They handle outbreaks initially be depending upon reports from host countries. In order to have the capability to provide a more robust response then they need the funding to do so, and as we already discussed no one wants to pay the kind of money needed to deal with a once in 100 years event.
SARS? Best thing I have read on it is at link.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/
Again, this was China lying and covering up. They did not allow a WHO team into the country until many months of dealing with the disease, one month after they told them it existed. Again, WHO is a UN agency and is dependent upon the info provided by member countries. If it had originated in the US they would have been telling the world it was under control too.
“My complaint is they spread false info to all member countries when sharing info is one of their core missions.”
What you appear to want is a health intelligence agency. One that has the authority to have the equivalent of black ops health teams that can swoop into a country at the first sign of a problem (read the SARS piece I linked and realize that even high level people in China didnt know about it for months since the provincial officials kept it hidden for a long time) to discover the problem and then tell the world. You want a public health CIA. Who is willing to fund that? I repeat, WHO shared the information that was given to them by China. They fulfilled one of their many core duties. What they didnt do, what you want them to do, is not their mission and no country will fund them to do anything so invasive. Your beef should be with China, not WHO.
“You publicly humiliate yourself steve with your monotonic Trump bad commentary.”
What I say is true though, unlike you repeating Trump lies. Science? How about this, demonstrate your science. A travel ban that stops Chinese tourists and business people from coming here, but doesnt stop Americans from flying back and forth to China? Exactly how does that stop the spread of disease? Exactly how effective are travel bans? Note that South Korea didnt impose one until April 1st.
“Poverty kills more each year than CV 19.”
The stupid, it burns. Please make it stop.
Steve
We really don’t know how many co-19 will kill in a year because it’s only been three months. Lots of happy talk about bending curves and such, but the worst could well be ahead of us.
“I hope Trump uses this crisis to force American and foreign companies to move their factories back to the US.”
What powers would he use to accomplish that? The largest, most successful companies in the US are dancing partners with the CCP. They see it as the future. One and one half billion uncomplaining willing, nonunion laborers and consumers who completely accept party hierarchy. You see, in China, you need to bribe far less people.
Maybe we could get some traction by pointing out that they are racists, and not disadvantaged POC, as the WHO seems to believe.
Chinese laundry detergent ad from CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/27/asia/chinese-racist-detergent-ad/index.html
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice,, shame on me.
You don’t need an intelligence service or many resources to understand that.
If you do; I cannot help you.
The WHO’s still on the job, and their new idea is a sure winner.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/who-suggests-alcohol-restricted-europe-coronavirus-lockdown
International trade is foreign policy. That, along with the military, is the area in which the president has the most authority. He can suspend international trade with one or all countries temporarily at least on his own authority and possibly permanently. He can certainly do so with the cooperation of the Congress.
There is no inalienable right to buy from China.
“You don’t need an intelligence service or many resources to understand that.
If you do; I cannot help you.”
What you are advocating is that WHO stop reporting. Seems to me lot more useful for us to just not trust information that comes from China. If anyone would be the fool then it would be the US, especially as we actually do have an intelligence service and they were reporting early on that this virus looked like trouble. So we ignored our own intelligence reports and accepted WHO reports knowing that they originated in China. We are going to make WHO the whipping boy? So sad that you are joining in with the group that thinks our leadership should never take responsibility for any decision, no matter how bad or incompetent.
Steve
That’s my position. And we shouldn’t trust any info from the WHO regarding China or that relies on Chinese data since the organization seems to be predisposed to repeat Chinese press releases.
What I guess I am not making clear that it is pretty much the job of WHO to repeat what any member country tells them. Until they are allowed to come in and see for themselves that is always what they have done. Since they rely upon funding from member countries I dont see that changing. We, the US, have alternate ways to confirm information from sources like China so I actually have a hard time believing that we relied upon WHO for any guidance, but if we did then we really were fools.
Steve
Steve, the problem is that they were allowed to come in but they just rubberstamped what the Chinese government told them. So much for experts.
The earliest I can find that WHO was in China was 1/21. On 1/22 they sent out information that there was human to human transmission. Now if you go back further, before WHO had people in China, they did send out a tweet saying that Chinese authorities had no evidence of human to hunk transmission, but if you look at the longer guidance they sent out to health organizations they noted that there were family pairs with the disease and it could not be ruled out. They also noted that based on prior experience with SARS it was likely it behaved like other respiratory pathogens.
Ok, I know in much of the world tweets are the only valid kind of messaging, but I think we ought to judge then by their entire message.
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19
Steve
Just to confirm that WHO was actually sending this info out I went to the Canadian version of CDC. They report what WHO was claiming.
http://www.bccdc.ca/resource-gallery/Documents/Statistics%20and%20Research/Statistics%20and%20Reports/Epid/Influenza%20and%20Respiratory/ERV/ERV_Bulletin_14Jan20.pdf