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President Trump was right to announce Tuesday that he will immediately stop funding the World Health Organization, which was set up to get $893 million from the U.S. in the existing two-year funding period.
The president’s action is the primary step required to spark significant reform of the United Nations company and the international health architecture.
Trump recently signified he was dissatisfied with the WHO. In an interview aired April 7 on “Hannity” on Fox News, Trump suggested the U.S. might stop adding to the company.
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By Tuesday, Trump had actually seen enough.
” So much death has actually been caused by their errors,” Trump said of the WHO. He is definitely right.
The WHO assisted spread the coronavirus in 4 principal methods.
First, in public the WHO distributed China’s false story that the virus was not transmissible person-to-person.
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The U.N. company, however, understood or must have known the Chinese federal government was not informing the truth. Among other things, Taiwan on Dec. 31 informed the U.N. body it presumed the pathogen was infectious in this style– and WHO experts also understood that to be the case.
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Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO medical professional, said at a press briefing on Monday that “best from the start” she believed the coronavirus was human-to-human transmissible, but senior WHO management ignored the evidence of this.
Second, the WHO in its public declarations supported the Chinese government’s effort to prevent the imposition of travel restrictions and quarantines on travelers from China. It was these travelers who turned an epidemic in main China into a worldwide pandemic.
Third, the WHO openly backed the dependability of Beijing’s stats. China’s substantial undercounting of its coronavirus cases and deaths lulled the U.S. into not taking preventative measures it would otherwise have actually adopted.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White Home coronavirus organizer, said March 31 that her group evaluated China’s stats and believed the coronavirus outbreak would be no worse than SARS (Severe Severe Breathing Syndrome), the 2002-03 epidemic that effected more than 8,000 individuals in 26 countries.
It was not until Birx saw the coronavirus strike Italy and Spain that the White House understood the fact– the coronavirus was far more dangerous than the Chinese government declared. However already it was far too late.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergic Reaction and Transmittable Diseases and a key Trump adviser in the coronavirus crisis has made comments comparable to Birx.
As of Tuesday, there were almost 2 million validated cases of COVID-19– the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus– all over the world, consisting of nearly 610,000 in the U.S. There were over 126,000 deaths confirmed worldwide, consisting of almost 26,000 in the U.S. However, all these figures are understated since of Chinese underreporting and due to the fact that few people worldwide have actually been checked.
Fourth, the WHO unreasonably delayed declaring the coronavirus epidemic a “public health emergency of global issue” up until Jan. 30.
The WHO, President Trump properly said Tuesday, failed its “basic duty and must be held accountable.”
There is no nation in a position to hold the WHO responsible besides the U.S., which gives the WHO far more money than does any other country.
” As the organization’s prominent sponsor, the United States has a task to insist on full accountability,” Trump correctly said.
Trump’s withdrawal of funding does not imply the U.S. is abandoning the world throughout the middle of a pandemic.
” We will continue to engage with the WHO to see if it can make significant reforms,” Trump vowed. “For the time being, we will redirect international health and straight deal with others.”
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Who are these others? The U.S. can work with Taiwan, which of all the nations worldwide has actually had perhaps the very best action to the coronavirus pandemic.
But Taiwan is the one nation the World Health Organization– bowing to Beijing’s demands– will not work with.
This shunning of the island republic was something painfully obvious from Dr. Bruce Aylward’s March 28 interview with Hong Kong’s RTHK. The senior advisor to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus refused to discuss Taiwan.
Now, after Trump’s announcement, the global neighborhood has the opportunity to work closely with an important partner.
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Of course, it’s not certain Trump will have the ability to style a better action to the coronavirus pandemic in the middle of the emergency, but defunding the WHO was a precondition for doing so.
Thanks to Trump taking the right action Tuesday, at least now there is hope.
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