U.S. President Donald Trump, 73, was among the first to call out the World Health Organization [WHO] for getting the deadly coornavirus AKA CoV-2 or Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China wrong, waiting until March 11 before declaring it global pandemic. For at least three months, WHO’s 55-year-old Ethiopiian Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus kept making excuses for China saying there was no human-to-human transmission which was not accurate. Tedros knew enough about the runaway Chinese epidemic he condemned Trump Feb. 3 for banning all flights to-and-from China. Tedros said no country should interfere with another’s “trade and travel,” without any reason. Trump gave plenty of reasons for banning Chinese flights Jan. 31, because he was concerned about letting China infect the U.S. with SARS CoV-2, not knowing at the time it was already too late.
China’s 66-year-old President Xi Jinping lobbied hard for Tedros to get the WHO post July 1, 2017. China has spent billions in Ethiopia, Tedros’s home country, leaving Tedros the perfect WHO candidate since he was beholden to Beijing. Xi’s wife Peng Liyuan served as a WHO goodwill ambassador for many years before Tedros landed the job. Repaying Xi was never in questions for Tedros, who’s confidence kept the U.S. and other U.N. member-states from knowing the extent to the Wuhan epidemic. By the time the truth came out March 11, it was already too late with millions of infected Chinese tourists descending on Europe, United States and beyond.. It’s no accident that Europe and the United States have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic. With 1,997,620 total cases and 126,596 deaths worldwide, SARS CoV-2 is the worst global plague since the 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Since Trump called WHO “China-centric” April 7, his White House team is looking into what really happened, getting coronavirus so wrong. “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus [2019-nCov] identified in #Wuhan, #China,” WHO tweeted March 18, over six weeks after Trump banned all flights from China Jan. 31. Trump wants to know how WHO could have gotten the coronavirus pandemic so wrong, not buying that Tedros didn’t have the facts about a spiraling epidemic in Wuhan. Calling Tedros a “Chinese proxy,” 70-year-old White House economic adviser Peter Navarro said China could not be trusted to factually report the Wuhan epidemic, suggesting China deliberately misreported its total cases, new cases and deaths from Covid-19.
Growing skepticism among Republicans on Capitol Hill exists over WHO’s refusal to set the record straight on China. “Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is in essence the Communist Party in China,” said House Oversight Committee. Trump has seen enough damage to the U.S. and the World to know that Tedros didn’t do his job, announcing today that he would withhold all funding to WHO pending an investigation. Tedros has been unapologetic, blaming Trump for politicizing the coronavirus epidemic. Navarro’s point that China seeks to control U.N. organizations like WHO can’t pass unnoticed as the U.S. assesses the untold damage in terms of lost lives and damage to the U.S. economy. Tedros can’t account for why, as WHO Director-General, he waited until March 11 to declare a global pandemic.
Cutting WHO’s U.S. funding is an important step in forcing Tedros out, no matter how much he’s backed by China. “It all tracts to China’s view of the world and how they want to control different types of international organizations, even as they don’t play by the international rules,” Navarro said. “If you don’t want more body bags, you refrain from polticizing it—please quarantine politicizing COVID,” Tedros told reporters in Geneva today. Withholding U.S. funding should get to the bottom of why Tedros failed to notify U.N. member-states that China had a spiraling epidemic that warranted urgent collective action. Certainly stopping the millions of infected Chinese citizens that traveled to Europe, the United States and beyond over the holidays. Why Tedros failed to do his job is anyone’s guess. Most likely, he did his friend Xi a favor keeping the epidemic secret to protect China’s economy.
Trump’s bold action on WHO is bound to draw criticism from Democrats and the anti-Trump press that finds everything Trump does objectionable. Defunding WHO should get rid to Tedros who’s clearly, as Navarro said, a Chinese proxy. When you consider the lies coming out of China, how could anyone trust WHO again without changing leadership. All indications point to Tedros knowing about China’s spiraling coornavirus epidemic in December, long before Trump declared his travel ban Jan. 31. Tedros has heaped praise on China for its transparency, when China has been anything but open. When Chinese Foreign Minister Zhao Lijian said March 13 that the U.S. military planted the virus in China, it tells you everything you need to know. Tedros was utterly silent listening to China spread the most vicious lies about the coronavirus global epidemic originating in Wuhan.
