Why the World Health Organization Failed (theatlantic.com) 445
Zeynep Tufekci, writing for The Atlantic: Donald Trump has declared that he would like the United States to stop funding the World Health Organization. It's unclear if he has the authority to change policy in this way, but he's trying. He wants to further break the WHO in ways it's already broken. Trump's ploy to defund the WHO is a transparent effort to distract from his administration's failure to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be disastrous too. Many nations, especially poor ones, currently depend on the WHO for medical help and supplies. But it is also true that in the run-up to this pandemic, the WHO failed the world in many ways. However, President Trump's move is precisely the kind of political bullying that contributed to the WHO's missteps.
The WHO failed because it is not designed to be independent. Instead, it's subject to the whims of the nations that fund it and choose its leader. In July 2017, China moved aggressively to elect its current leadership. Instead of fixing any of the problems with the way the WHO operates, Trump seems to merely want the United States to be the bigger bully. Fixing the WHO is crucial, because we desperately need well-functioning global health institutions. But that requires a correct diagnosis of the problem. There is an alternate timeline in which the leadership of the WHO did its job fully and properly, warning the world in time so that effective policies could be deployed across the planet. Instead, the WHO decided to stick disturbingly close to China's official positions, including its transparent cover-ups. In place of a pandemic that is bringing global destruction, just maybe we could have had a few tragic local outbreaks that were contained.
[...] Imagine the WHO took notice of the information it received from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Imagine the WHO also recognized that whistleblower doctors in Wuhan were being threatened with jail time. It would have realized that something important was happening, something worth investigating. It could have immediately, but politely, demanded access to the region around Wuhan and its hospitals. This alternate timeline does not ignore realpolitik. China is not a nation known for cooperating with international agencies when it doesn't want to. (This tendency is not specific to China. A U.S. law nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act" threatens to invade the International Criminal Court in The Hague should any U.S. service member be indicted.) If China refused access, as it likely would have, the expectation isn't that the WHO officials would just get up and yell "Freedom!" at China's leadership. But there was a path that would recognize the constraints of international diplomacy, but still put the health of billions above all else.
The WHO failed because it is not designed to be independent. Instead, it's subject to the whims of the nations that fund it and choose its leader. In July 2017, China moved aggressively to elect its current leadership. Instead of fixing any of the problems with the way the WHO operates, Trump seems to merely want the United States to be the bigger bully. Fixing the WHO is crucial, because we desperately need well-functioning global health institutions. But that requires a correct diagnosis of the problem. There is an alternate timeline in which the leadership of the WHO did its job fully and properly, warning the world in time so that effective policies could be deployed across the planet. Instead, the WHO decided to stick disturbingly close to China's official positions, including its transparent cover-ups. In place of a pandemic that is bringing global destruction, just maybe we could have had a few tragic local outbreaks that were contained.
[...] Imagine the WHO took notice of the information it received from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Imagine the WHO also recognized that whistleblower doctors in Wuhan were being threatened with jail time. It would have realized that something important was happening, something worth investigating. It could have immediately, but politely, demanded access to the region around Wuhan and its hospitals. This alternate timeline does not ignore realpolitik. China is not a nation known for cooperating with international agencies when it doesn't want to. (This tendency is not specific to China. A U.S. law nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act" threatens to invade the International Criminal Court in The Hague should any U.S. service member be indicted.) If China refused access, as it likely would have, the expectation isn't that the WHO officials would just get up and yell "Freedom!" at China's leadership. But there was a path that would recognize the constraints of international diplomacy, but still put the health of billions above all else.
Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why the World Health Organization Failed". The title implies the WHO "failed", which is quite a provocative statement, given how hard it would be to define a metric to measure success/failure for such an organization. I would accept headlines like "Can the WHO function better given its current legal framework & funding" etc.
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
If you had bothered to read the tweets from the WHO in January, it's pretty obvious they failed drastically. You had Tedros praising China's quick response to the virus even as their Lunar New Year migration was in full effect.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The WHO did sound like a bit of a Chinese cheerleader at several critical junctures, but part of that (as the summary states) is about the reality of politics. There were messages that needed to get out sooner that didn’t, for whatever reasons.
Hindsight makes everything look easy though. The timeline on the ground, assuming a start of mid-late December of the outbreak was very rapid. Halting the Lunar New Year migration at the last minute was something that would have major impacts... and many citi
Re: (Score:2)
Hindsight makes everything look easy though.
Exactly.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
No one had it right from the start, but it seems that everyone wants to say "the WHO isn't bad, let's figure out how to do it better" when it was obvious they deliberately delayed effective responses. At the same time, those same people had admonished the administration for taking measures early on when they did, called them xenophobic and now are turning around and saying "well you didn't act soon enough". Trump, love him or hate him, is pointing out that the WHO should have been more open, should have signaled earlier with its warnings, and didn't, deliberately. It seems that if Trump had personally authorized a seal team to execute patient zero before anything spread, those who hate him would still have admonished him for that person dying, his abuse of power for sending in the seal team, his xenophobia for sending them after a CHINESE person, for not responding sooner by containing the animal that infected the animal in the first place, and being asleep on the job. It's lunacy how much people go back and fourth depending on who's the subject of their criticism. Either we have it one way, or the other. We can't have it both ways, unless you're irrational and happy with that.
Failed or made public and political statements? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligence briefs to the president had more important information early on.
There may be considerable difference in what is being stated in the public arena and what internal documents are circulating amongst governments and agencies involved.
It often is more important to see what the action was taken following the internal information in order to gauge things. Publicly related stuff is mostly for posturing which is important but not necessarily pivotal in the management of something like an epidemic. It matters more what real steps are taken.
Could the world in general have done better early on? Certainly when we look back on it.
What will the course of the disease be as it spread out across every corner of the globe..... we will find out.
The world will hopefully learn a lot as this disease progresses, persists, and ultimately gets beaten back to a degree. Lots of lessons.
Will we act more quickly the next time or not will really be important.
Will we have the capability if something even worse emerges? Remains to be seen.
For now we are being schooled in all of the facets of our failings.
Re:Failed or made public and political statements? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you feeding the troll or baiting him?
Only substantive (and clear) bit was about the intelligence briefings, but the insight there is that Trump is severely conflicted about trusting the intelligence services that he is supposed to be in charge of. They keep telling him ugly truths and he HATES that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
So your thesis is that if someone would say it would be bad if the president sent a military force into another country to murder a citizen of that country for being ill, that would be a bad thing? Do you also think it would be proper for China to send a military force into the US to murder US citizens for being ill to prevent the illness from spreading?
Here's a thought (Score:4, Insightful)
The Chinese gov't might not be wholly to blame. It's entirely possible, even likely, that other governments have a vested interest in making China look good so they can continue to a) have access to their markets and b) have access to their cheap labor supply.
There were articles here on
Basically, we're all still thinking local, when the world has become global...
Individual Americans are starting to plan (Score:3)
I can tell you that I save every chance I get, and it means I don't go anywhere or do anything. And I make significantly more than the median income. I thought that might stop when my kid graduated college, but her base pay as a nurse is so low that I'll still be help
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Informative)
The travel ban was xenophobic because it only affected foreign national travelers. If the ban had included any kind of serious mandatory screening for US citizens coming from that part of the world you could possibly argue it wasn't xenophobic. As it stands more than 400,000 people had already traveled to the USA directly from China between the time China announced there was a problem, and Trump took action. More than 40,000 people have come in since then and the precautions when they have been enforced was simply asking questions with little to no followup. The appropriate action would have been to quarantine and test every traveler, regardless of nationality.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. WHO was relaying the scientific information coming out of China normally literally with a day of it becoming available. All countries have medical officers. That is the only thing that should have been looking at. Australia and NZ (who both have the virus well under control) listened. Others didn't.
But yes, WHO also played political games. It said things they were clearly meant to keep major supporters on side, and pissed off other major supporters. Maybe they could have been cleverer about it - but when you are trying to be friends with two warring parties it must be difficult.
The problem with in US in particular is your president has convinced a large segment of the US population it's OK to treat two sorts of information (facts, and political manoeuvring) in the same way. In the US if some objective statement about reality backup by evidence disagrees your political stance - well it must be fake news.
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't fault the WHO for trying to play nice with the Chinese government, because I understand the reality of politics.
What I DO blame them for, and what I consider a huge failure, is spreading false information and bad advice when we know they had information to the contrary from reputable sources. The only feasible two reasons for this are either incompetence or political considerations. I'm honestly not sure which one is worse, but in either case, it's a dramatic failure, as this current condition is one of the primary reasons the WHO exists in the first place.
Trump is right about this, just perhaps for all the wrong reasons, and perhaps with the wrong solution as well. If you haven't yet, I suggest you actually read the article. The world certainly can't blame all its ills on the WHO's mistakes, of course, but the constant downplaying of the seriousness in early days, apparently in a misguided attempt to avoid political embarrassment to China, absolutely didn't help matters.
Re: (Score:3)
The WHO never pretended to have anything other than the data China gave it, so if Trump suspected that China was lying then he should have suspected the WHO advice as well.
Trump did believe the Chinese though. He tweeted about it: https://twitter.com/realDonald... [twitter.com]
China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!
24th of January
Re: (Score:3)
The WHO did sound like a bit of a Chinese cheerleader at several critical junctures, but part of that (as the summary states) is about the reality of politics. There were messages that needed to get out sooner that didn’t, for whatever reasons.
The article stated that "in July 2017, China moved aggressively to elect its current leadership." It implies that was successful so China's actions to elect WHO leadership and other world leaders' compliance with those efforts seems to be the reason why the WHO acted the way it did. So leaders of the Western Democracies allowing a Chinese takeover of the WHO appears to be the root cause, other than the general governing structure of the WHO allowing it in the first place.
Not that fixing that is easy, as pol
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Everyone talks about our leaders not taking the pandemic seriously at the outset, but in fact everyone was in denial.
If university administrators had tried to tell students prior to spring break not to go to Europe or Mexico or Asia or the Caribbean, those same students would have been in an uproar about it. By God, they had made their vacation plans weeks ago, and no one was going to tell them what not to do and where not to have fun.
And the parents? I can only imagine the angry calls that our dean and provost would have gotten from them, for presuming to dictate their childrens' time away from campus. Of course, once everyone got back from spring break and people started getting sick, then suddenly everyone got serious about it. It's always 20-20 hindsight once a crisis smacks you in the face.
People are terrible at dealing with situations that happen perhaps once in a generation. They deny, they hesitate to act, and tell themselves and everyone else that everything will be okay. And afterwards, they'll look for someone else to blame for not doing those things they were unwilling to do themselves. It's human nature.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Alternatively, to remind them which country is actually paying the bills.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
No, in order for the WHO to not be a Chinese sock puppet *on the American dime* the US is pulling its funding. If the Chinese want a PR department with the fig leaf of an international organization as a front, they can damn well pay for it themselves.
The WHO relies on the host country for resources and information -- presumably because of their own funding/resource limits and because it's usually in the best interest of the host countries to provide help -- so if the outbreak had started in the U.S. they'd be a U.S sock puppet on China's dime -- according to your characterization. What they need is more funding, independence and guaranteed, unrestricted access to in-country resources and information. Host countries should allow the WHO do simply do t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The US contributes an order of magnitude more money than China, despite having half the population. If the WHO was backing China's lies at the expense of the US, why again should we keep sending them the money. Yes, it is political. Damn, straight. First rule of politics is, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Insightful)
If you had bothered to read the tweets from the WHO in January, it's pretty obvious they failed drastically.
The correct thing to do is to participate more actively and improve the WHO, not to dump it and all the people who really need it.
Or was the USA's participation in the WHO just to give them money and cross their fingers they would do the right thing? If so, they only have themselves to blame for the failure.
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Insightful)
It speaks volumes about the current administration and their inability to wield soft power. The various UN organizations have historically been dominated by the US and were tools of US political ambitions. Not 100%, they were never simple puppets, but the US had a huge influence over them. But with the gutting of the State Dept and appointing people who do not understand the systems they are trying to manipulate, the US's influence has dropped dramatically. Even a few years back, the WHO probably would have been mirroring US policy and US politics, overriding official Chinese statements with US approved ones. Not so much now, and naturally when there is a power vacuum, there will be states ready to fill it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This.
It speaks volumes about the current administration and their inability to wield soft power. The various UN organizations have historically been dominated by the US and were tools of US political ambitions. Not 100%, they were never simple puppets, but the US had a huge influence over them. But with the gutting of the State Dept and appointing people who do not understand the systems they are trying to manipulate, the US's influence has dropped dramatically. Even a few years back, the WHO probably would have been mirroring US policy and US politics, overriding official Chinese statements with US approved ones. Not so much now, and naturally when there is a power vacuum, there will be states ready to fill it.
It hadn't occurred to me before, but this is a beautiful explanation of Trump's folly in disengaging from International institutions and squandering the US's soft power.
Under Obama, H. Clinton, or a non-Trump Republican the US would have reduced China's influence at the WHO, and when the pandemic hit it would have given the WHO backing to push back against China's PR efforts.
It still wouldn't have been a perfect response, but it probably would have been better.
The US has been the biggest funder of the WHO d
Re: (Score:3)
Money is the only tool that Trump knows. It's always about defunding or making someone pay for something. When it looked like Germany might have a vaccine he didn't ask them to share it as they undoubtedly would have done, he tried to buy it.
Re: (Score:2)
There is strong political pressure on Trump, those who whisper in his ears at night, to cut funding to any and all international organizations; the UN, the IMF, the WHO, the Girl Scouts, whoever. There is a strong isolationist and anti-globalist movement behind Trump. To the Trump base, "reform" is accomplished through dismantling.
Re: (Score:3)
America was founded on globalism in some sense- we were foreign colonies after all, and the continent was "discovered" by trying to find better trade routes. Globalisation was considered a great thing as long as it was western powers colonizing and extracting resources from lesser countries with smaller armies. It soured once we were supposed to treat other countries as trading equals and jobs started going wherever labor was cheaper.
If we need to change the course, it works better as members of those orga
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Interesting)
And EVERYONE ELSE failed drastically. It's silly to look back and claim that their early reports were wrong when no one else had any information either and were repeating the same things. If they had said on day 1, "everyone shelter in place!", they would have been laughed at. The WHO quickly changed it's tune; and people hated that, they hate whishy washy advice, they don't understand why science doesn't just give one right answer and stick to it. Based upon the evidence it received at the time, the advice the WHO gave was reasonable. As compared to world leaders who made bad decisions based upon the evidence they had at the time. WHO never claimed "it's just a mild flu", they knew it was much more dangerous to the individual from the start, but they didn't know how infectious it was or how it spread. When evidence came out that transmission could be spread by coughing, the WHO message changed; when evidence came out that it wasn't just micro droplets that could spread this, the WHO message changed again.
The fact that they kept changing the message is a positive sign. The evidence they had at the start, at the time it was making serious "mistakes" was very sparse. They did not have a giant team of researchers able to be airdropped into China to push around officials and demand answers, which you probably would need but no organization has that abiilty (not even nuclear watchdog agencies). So they're left trusting what the officials say and interviewing doctors.
Of course, Trump may claim today that he's been saying to never trust anything a Chinese official says and has been saying it in his weekly campaign rallies for four years. But he's just bloviating to the crowd and appealing to his voting base by cutting funding to an international organization.
Everyone else did _NOT_ fail drastically (Score:3)
As other posters have pointed out the core problem is that Donald Trump gutted the State Department and didn't listen to epidemiologists and the American Military Intelligence community (both of who warned about this back in _November_ and have been warning about it in general since 2007).
The result was that China was left in a position to lead on this rather than the United States, and they fucked up. Then we followed their lead and made t
Re: (Score:3)
For that matter, Trump was also praising China's response in January. Can we dump him as well?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only two countries were prepared to act that quickly (S Korea and Taiwan). So the lesson here is to improve the system so next time we have a better response. That includes the WHO, I'
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Taiwan warned the WHO about human to human transmission early January. The WHO didn't publicly change its tune until the US locked down its borders, initially criticizing the US for overreacting.
The WHO is a political organization. Even if the US defunded it, China and EU could just cover those funds if they really wanted to. Not sure why the US, with similar size to the EU and smaller than China should fund more than its share into an organization that only serves Chinese interests.
Re: (Score:2)
The correct response should be a capitalist one: fund them even more so that China's share becomes smaller, thus allowing the WHO to not care so much about China's demands.
It may also require some changes within the WHO itself, possibly model it after NATO?
Re: (Score:2)
The correct response should be a capitalist one: fund them even more so that China's share becomes smaller, thus allowing the WHO to not care so much about China's demands.
What? That's a bit of tortured logic, so you are saying that today, the US puts more total funding into WHO but doesnt get it's demands met, so pay more and suddenly they will listen?
By that logic if you go to a steakhouse and order a filet-mignon for $35 and the waiter delivers your steak to another table and brings you an uncooked burger patty, the answer is to throw another $35 dollars at them and this time it will work?
WHO, and all other trans-national bodies are not a service, they are supposed to be r
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:2)
Yes and that part of their charter is broken by China, the US, my country and the rest.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Informative)
The US is funding the Who more than china, but china planet their man into the leadership of the thing, so "vote with the wallet" will not work here.
Unless it's a "we're only paying when china plants are removed, and the organization can guarantee that they won't be planted back in".
The true failure of the US here was not stopping the china plants to be planted in first place.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That outsized influence was one of the reasons the US was so widely resented throughout the world.
Really? People were upset about US influence in WHO?
Citation badly needed. I think you're just making shit up.
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:3)
As a non-American who looks at USA as a bully I would much rather have it being the USA than fucking China for god's sake. The only people rejoicing at this failure of USA are europhiles who want to live in the racist utopia that is the Europe thinking China is not going to hurt them ever.
Re: (Score:3)
No, Taiwan claimed this and has claimed this for weeks now. Taiwan released an e-mail today sent in December after the first 7 cases in Wuhan. The WHO said they didn't receive it, which they also didn't seem to understand the questions when it was asked about Taiwan telling the WHO about coronavirus during a press conference a few weeks ago which they subsequently shut down.
Taiwan's CDC said that because they specifically mentioned "atypical pneumonia" – reminiscent of SARS, which is transmitted via h
Re: (Score:3)
Clearer and fully version of that video, including where they call the WHO guy back
https://twitter.com/HKWORLDCIT... [twitter.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Unlike COVID-19 SARS and MERS were largely spread through health care facilities.
R0 for SARS and MERS in health care settings was around 3, but in other places R0 was less than the critical value of 1. Transmission outside hospitals *did* occur occasionally and was instrumental in the geographic spread of the viruses, but the pandemics could not sustain themselves after hospitals tightened up transmission precautions.
COVID-19 can't be stopped by focusing on just one kind of place. It can be transmitted anyw
Re: (Score:2)
The WHO managed in a month from the first notification from China, to identify, during a developing situation, and zero knowledge about how this virus operates, that there was a serious problem and risk. Any failures since then (end of January) are on the nations that failed to listen and develop a plan early on to cope.
So to assert "But it is also true that in the run-up to this pandemic, the WHO failed the world in many ways. " as in this story is a bit much. I'm sure mistakes were made, some might be fix
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:3)
WHO disavowed any human transmission or Chinese involvement until February. It still holds opinions that are contrary to the scientific consensus and still hasn't called out China for holding back information for 4 weeks and still misreporting the numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
This is what people with a functional brain calls "pandering" or being "China's Little Bitch".
The simplest explanation is that WHO directly failed its most important goal and that is to "Globalize Health Information" in way that prevents governments from lying about shit so much that things like this happen. China Successfully Pimped the WHO out to regurgitate their bullshit and the many Nations of the world "bought it".
Anyone defending WHO is a part of the problem and not the solution.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Why the World Health Organization Failed". The title implies the WHO "failed", which is quite a provocative statement
It is no less provocative than parts of the content, such as:
"Trump's ploy to defund the WHO is a transparent effort to distract from his administration's failure to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic."
or
"Trump seems to merely want the United States to be the bigger bully. "
People don't like incrementalism (Score:3)
e.g. they hate being told "nothing is ever prefect, and worse everything you build is going to break down and need constant adjustments. There are no universal truths outside mathematics, and even some of those are in doubt".
So the WHO does a lot of good, but it's constrained by politics. We'd need complex systems to get around that, and we'd have to adjust them as they break down (which
Re:Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:4, Informative)
He's not the only one. Lots of world leaders failed. Some failed their countries but succeeded as politicians.
And, yes, WHO failed. It failed in the way indicated by the summary, though I haven't investigated enough to know if the precise mechanism of the failure was that indicated by the summary. But WHO recovered from it's failures, and some politicians ....
It's also worth noting that WHO doesn't have teams of investigators at the site of things reported to it, so it MUST rely on the work of others. It's basically a data sharing operation with a few public spokesmen.
Re: (Score:2)
"failed their countries but succeeded as politicians."
Now that is surprisingly deep thinking material right there.
Well said... WELL SAID!
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:2)
Still talking to yourself Mr Astray?
Re: Why the World Health Organization Failed (Score:2)
I'm not in the US.
Do you find insulting people helps at all? I doubt it.
WHO problem is larger than just China (Score:2, Informative)
WHO has been a disaster not just during this pandemic, but in many other areas as well - this defunding has been a long time coming and is well deserved.
Why fund a sham world health organization that exists to promote propaganda by dictators [washingtonpost.com]?
Re:WHO problem is larger than just China (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember hearing criticisms about the WHO's kowtowing to political organizations back 40+ years ago.
I doubt if it's doable in this political climate, but maybe we need to consider building a new, better, more truly independent multinational health organization. For that to work, though, the countries would need to give it some guaranteed freedom of movement and reporting which don't depend on the host's good graces... which is why I doubt it could happen.
Re: (Score:2)
On the one hand, China is a villain and everything they do must be condemned as wrong. That extends to the WHO's collusion with China in this case, making WHO a villain that must now be condemned as wrong.
On the other hand, Trump is a villain and everything he does must be condemned as wrong. But here, Villain number 1 is condemning Villain number 2.
So we are forced into a state of terrible cognitive dissonance. How do we agree with what Trump is doing while still following the rule that everything Trump
Re:WHO problem is larger than just China (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand, China is a villain and everything they do must be condemned as wrong.
Nope. The CCP is a vilain and must be condemned as wrong, because they are lying sacks of shit that caused people to die in order to save face. "China" is mostly innocent people that played no part in this crime.
Hypocritical (Score:2)
Ha, you're knocking WHO for cozying with dictators? You're either not an American or massively ignorant of our country's history. We compromise our values on a daily basis supporting some of the regimes we support.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
WHO has been a disaster not just during this pandemic, but in many other areas as well - this defunding has been a long time coming and is well deserved.
My god so much ignorance. Let's help you address it: The WHO is an organisation that exists purely to analyse health data from countries around the world. That is data provided by governments. It doesn't matter if that government is run by a democratically elected genius, a democratically elected moron, a dictator, or one of the above pretending to be another of the above. They are not a political organisation. They don't, and should not give a shit if a government leader kisses babies, or murders them in t
Re: WHO problem is larger than just China (Score:3)
+5 insightful
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly right. Just a couple of weeks ago the tangerine tantrum tweeted about WHO doing a good job.
https://twitter.com/realdonald... [twitter.com]
Motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the W.H.O. keeps receiving money from it's member states, what motivation is there for it to fix itself?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Motivation (Score:2)
Re: Motivation (Score:2)
Because you are proposing nothing in its place. Which is worse.
Yes it needs improving. But judge against the range of countries that had different response to the same information. The death rates aren't the same (but the picture won't be entirely clear for a while).
Simple (Score:2, Insightful)
The WHO is owned by the Chinese government. Simple, really.
Re: Simple (Score:2)
False statement.
Re: (Score:3)
Yep. The WHO director is a Chinese shill. We pay most of the bills for their anti-American propaganda and Xi worship.
Fuck China (the CCP specifically) and their WHO puppet.
Well a fix is on the way (Score:2, Troll)
Now that Trump has zeroed out any influence the U.S. might have on the W.H.O. it is now much more possible for them to fix their problems. It appears that other nations are stepping up to the plate on that, once again abandoning another position of leadership the U.S. once had.
And the MAGA hats cheer. They want more infuriated liberals.
Yeah the W.H.O. did blunder here and there. So did the CDC and the FDA and of course the Executive branch which basically dismissed all pandemic response structure (th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> the response to an engine failure on a multi-engine aircraft is not to just immediately jump out.
Uh. The plane already crashed. The damage has been done. What is the point of the WHO if they will just push lies from a shitty authoritarian government? Seriously. Please explain what the WHO actually did to help anyone other than China and why they deserve to keep receiving US tax dollars.
WHO wants to protect China? Then they can get funding from China. It already acts like the Chinese Health Org.
> inf
Re: (Score:2)
Right, we should just throw the WHO away because it didn't work 100% correctly in this one individual case. No reforming it, no plans to create another that works, we should just cut and run because it didn't work one time.
That's just an amazing conclusion you've come to there...
Re: (Score:2)
And the MAGA hats cheer. They want more infuriated liberals.
But the response to an engine failure on a multi-engine aircraft is not to just immediately jump out. In Trump's case, what we appear to have is all-engine failure.
Well you see the failing engine is infuriating the liberals, so therefore it is a good thing!
The obvious reason (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a giant institution serving hundreds of different masters. The people there get paychecks that are exactly the same regardless of the quality, quantity, or timeliness of their work. You'd never expect excellence from an organization like that. So when you give them a big challenge that requires excellence for them to succeed, they aren't likely to succeed.
Re:The obvious reason (Score:5, Funny)
Taiwan alerted the WHO in Dec about community spread. look at the short interview. [youtu.be] Look at how the top officials reacted.
As you can see when presented by the reporter with the fact that Taiwan alerted them they first pretended to not hear the question. then asked to move on to anotther question, then when pressed HUNG UP! this is what we are dealing with here.
Re: The obvious reason (Score:2)
And how has your country and mine enabled them to have independent powers to avoid the many masters problem? They haven't, they have been part of the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
serving hundreds of different masters
WHO isn't supposed to serve masters. It is supposed to serve principles.
Re: (Score:3)
Tedros may have saved his job by running with the CCP narrative, but if the Atlantic writer is correct**, he is guilty of criminal negligence in the deaths of 75k-118k people and counting.
** Researchers estimate that acting even a week or two early [nytimes.com] might have reduced cases by 50 to 80 percent.
Re: The obvious reason (Score:2)
Tell your government that (and mine for that matter).
Re: (Score:2)
So when you give them a big challenge that requires excellence for them to succeed, they aren't likely to succeed.
I question this. They are an organisation that is apolitical and rely exclusively on officially reported data from governments. They are a statistics organisation, not the CIA. So given the data available to them (by the Chinese) at a time when the west knew very little about the virus, tell us how they didn't "succeed" in their role?
Now if you want to question the data they had to work with then I'm right with you and would suggest a major increase in their funding so they actually have the resources to co
China and the US made it fail (Score:4, Interesting)
Like any world organization, the WHO is only as good as its members are willing it to be. There is no magic, such international devices have to rely on goodwill.
China used it as a propaganda tool instead of a health communication pipe, what can the WHO do about that?
The US claims the WHO has powers it clearly wasn't designed to have, just to be able to withdraw from it by claiming it failed, without having to look too bad.
Both are looking to improve their image instead of working. The failure is there, at the cause, rather than at the consequence.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: China and the US made it fail (Score:2)
They reported what China said, as "The Chinese government said...". That was actually true.
Seriously?!? (Score:2)
I come here for tech articles. Not for more of the rampant idiotic political discourse that is going on elsewhere. Knock it off.
As far as the WHO: It failed. If I fail at my job my employer fires me. I don't see what its any different here. WHO can go get a job with another country or fix its policies and get rehired by the US. Its as simple as that and trying to politicize it either by the right or the left is disgusting and wont fix anything.
Re: Seriously?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
It isn't a person, and you have proposed no alternative. No you don't sack international cooperation organisations, if you are smart you try to improve them.
Still his fault? (Score:2)
..."While a review is conducted" (Score:4, Insightful)
News is just impossible to read lately. Here, from CNN (which detests Trump):
(CNN) President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted.
Trump said the review would cover the WHO's "role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14... [cnn.com]
Does anyone believe there is no basis for a review? Wouldn't threatening to pull their funding be a good motivator?
Re: ..."While a review is conducted" (Score:2)
What alternative do you propose?
No just threatening to take it away is childish response. Challenging it to improve is likely justified. But that means working with other nations to give it more independence, rather than leaving it, like so many UN bodies hamstrung by the politics of multiple nations.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone believe there is no basis for a review?
Yes. I do. Hi. You may not remember history well, like how the WHO has been criticised for the last two pandemics for crying wolf and being an alarmist organisation, but I do. You may not remember history well, like how the WHO was criticised for not sticking to official government reported data during the H1N1 outbreak but I do. You may not remember history well, like how the WHO is an organisation that make only generalised recommendations and how governments around the world have their own health organis
Globalism is Why (Score:3)
Each nation's health organization should collaborate with other nations to share information, share research, and provide certain kinds of relief assistance.
Countries unable to conjure their own national health organization or equipment infrastructure, should use that inability to refocus their finances/corruption to enact a national health organization before they can have a seat at the table. It's all fun an games to plant flags, announce your sovereignty, but if you constantly need to subsist off of other nations, you're not a sovereign nation.
Or WHO failed because of biased news? (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine the WHO took notice of the information it received from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The first time I have heard claims that Hong Kong sent any information to WHO that we didn't know. I read HK news everyday. HK started checking the temperature of arriving passengers out of precaution once Wuhan reported unknown pneumonia cases on December 32. (Checking temperature helps little, if any, for this epidemic.)
Taiwan? Yeah they and their friends in the western media and government claimed retroactively that they "warned" WHO about human-to-human transmission. They even released a letter they sent to WHO which can be seen in this Fox news item dewcribing it as "showing unheeded warning about coronavirus" [foxnews.com]. They and Fox must be hoping we don't read English. I reproduce the content of this letter (which you can read in the link);
News resources today indicate that at least seven atypical pneumonia cases were reported in Wuhan, CHINA. Their health authority replied to the media that the cases were believed not SARS; however, the samples are still under examination, and cases have been isolated for treatment.
I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us.
Thank you very much in advance for your attention to this matter.
Best Regards.
So this letter clearly just repeated what the Wuhan government told WHO and the media which clearly indicated that Wuhan was still investigating. The Taiwanese did not raise any alarm, evidence or objection. And there isn't even the word "human" in this entire letter.
Yet somehow the anti-China Taiwanese government and the western media can spin this to claim they have warned of human-to-human transmission to WHO. And the fake claims are repeated round after round.
and before you call WHO failing, maybe you should learn some history about WHO and the swine flu pandemic not long ago [sciencemag.org]:
The chief flu scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) today defended his agency against criticism that the H1N1 swine flu pandemic was "fake," that its threat to human health was hyped, and that WHO's policies were influenced by vaccine manufacturers who benefited from the pandemic virus.
Oh yeah sure, WHO failed: WHO either cried wolf coming when the wolf didn't eat the whole village as expected or they underestimated the power of the wolf. Next time they should give out absolutely correct prediction without any deviation, like God would have done.
Re: (Score:2)
typo: December 31
China is the reason the WHO failed (Score:2)
This is begging the question. (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is the nature of WHO's "failure"?
There are three complaints I hear. (1) On January 14 they relayed a report from China saying the China had not found any human to human transmission and (2) they waited too long to declare a pandemic. (3) They are too deferential to Chinese government feelings.
But arguably all these things were and are appropriate.
(1) On January 14 there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission available to WHO; there were 60 cases in the world, 59 in Wuhan and one in Thailand that could be traced to Wuhan. The Taiwan case was reported a week later, a day after WHO relayed the information that there was now evidence of human to human transmission.
(2) The pandemic declaration is a signal for countries to move away from restricting travelers arriving from certain countries to mitigating spread within their own borders. It is not binding one way or the other on anyone, and all the information needed to make your own determination was public.
For example, when the Trump Administration announced its travel "ban" with China, 21 countries were reporting COVID-19 cases. That represents US judgment, right or wrong, that at that time there was not a pandemic. Had WHO declare a pandemic, it would not have affected our own choices either way.
The pandemic declaration mainly affects the responses of countries that don't have something like the US CDC; the conservative approach is to wait before telling people to give up on keeping the virus out of their country. On March 11 (the declaration date) there were 22 countries with more than 100 cases; a week earlier that figure was 11; and two weeks earlier it was 6.
(3) WHO is too nice to China: WHO has no authority to compel anyone to do anything. It's a cooperative association that depends on members to voluntarily share data and access. This doesn't work if the places the problem is coming from sees WHO as hostile or partisan.
The question is -- what would be the alternative to WHO being diplomatic? It's either to make WHO an official *world government* body, with power to compel countries to comply; or you fly blind in a pandemic. Probverbs 15 applies here: The heart of the righteous studieth to answer: but the mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things..
WTF kind of bullshit propaganda is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed. Another bullshit loaded question designed to misinform. Spin, spin, spin.
Trump desperately needs a scapegoat.
WTF is that drivel? (Score:2)
The WHO is independent. What it is *not* is an organisation that takes data from anywhere other than official government records.
How can someone write so much while at the same time knowing so little.
Seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Enough of this crap. All this blaming the WHO for using what it had is just a joke and scape goating. The US was sharing intel with NATO and Israel in November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politic... [go.com]
https://www.timesofisrael.com/... [timesofisrael.com]
We all know China hides crap. We could have shared the report with the WHO. We could have used the report to prepare or at least more closely monitor the situation. We did nothing. I don't know the depths of the early intel so we can only speculate. What we do know is that when it started to be taken seriously on the world stage we did nothing: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20... [cnn.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
The little travel ban was worthless. We did not block anyone to count and had no testing for those we allowed in. https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
The State Department didn't address travel for weeks: https://travel.state.gov/conte... [state.gov]
So sure the WHO failed. China failed. Using them as scapegoats for our failure is just sad and will lay the foundation to repeat the same mistakes in the future. I can't even fully blame the president for all his failures, but he needs to step up and own this so he can lead this country out of it. I don't see that happening and in the meantime Rome burns.
Re:Seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Failed? (Score:2)
The WHO isn't responsible for your local health care. You missed national and local responses. All from the same WHO guidance, but different results. I agree we need to look at improving them, but if you ignore the rest, like leaders who denied the situation, you aren't helping.
Re: Fighting Fire with Fire (Score:2)
And was driving distrust and ridicule of the US. Now it is increasing deaths.