I know it has become fashionable to blame WHO for virtually the entire pandemic as we seem to have a problem examining our own behavior, and now our royal aspirant (“I have total authority”) president wants to cut off all their funding. Apart from that tactic being totally counter-productive, a look at WHO’s history shows their importance to world health.
Given the ease of travel and communication throughout the world any approach to a potential pandemic requires an international approach. We must have a seat at that table. If that means paying dues, then so be it, but the tactic of taking the ball and running home with it if we don’t get our way is childish and ultimately injurious to ourselves.
Let’s look at WHO’s accomplishments and then the timeline of their response to CORVID-19. Their mission goes beyond the mere treatment of physical illness, its stated objective being “the attainment of the highest possible level of health for all people in the world” with health defined as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” To that end, they eradicated smallpox (by 1977 accomplishing in 20 years what had been attempted for centuries), and have come close to eliminating leprosy and polio, scourges all that killed millions upon millions of people world-wide.
So who does have responsibility for ultimately deciding how to attack a pandemic in this country? Not WHO, surely. The president has at his disposal hundreds of experts and agencies that can be marshaled to deliver quality information. Yet the president’s attack on WHO seems to imply that he looks to them for direction and action. Now WHO was very slow at declaring this a pandemic. Did they make a mistake by taking China at its word? Absolutely. But so did Trump. See his statement on Jan. 24th. This and later comments all echoed what WHO was saying. Yet the U.S. has far more resources and intelligence agencies who were telling the president something else. “Intelligence agencies “have been warning on this since January,” a U.S. official who had access to reports given to Congress and Trump officials told the [Washington] Post. ...“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” the official said. “The system was blinking red.”
So let’s see what was said and when:
2018 John Bolton and the administration reduce funding for the CDC and merge the agencies whose job it was to look for and manage disease outbreaks. “Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.” (Snopes. The response has been that Trump and Bolton were simply streamlining the organizations and no staff were reduced.) What is clear is that the administration cut “funding for the CDC’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts had been reduced by 80%, including funding for the agency’s efforts in China.” Whether any of this would have changed the outcome is, of course, speculative. Much of the cuts were made up by other Congressional funding, so probably not.
Dec 19 WHO was informed of a cluster of cases of a new virus in Wuhan China
Jan 21 The president claims to have banned flights from China. This actually never happened as flights continued to arrive from China for weeks after. He did on Jan 31 restrict travel for “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days.” 430,000 people arrived from China after Jan 1 and 40,000 following the supposed shutdown. It was the airlines themselves beginning with British Airways who stopped flights from China beginning Jan 29. With that many people having come from China it was inevitable that the virus was on US shores in early January. (Washington Times and CRconservative review) Senators Cotton and Hawley had called for a shutdown earlier in January.
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — Trump in a CNBC interview.
Jan. 23: “The World Health Organization on Thursday decided not to declare the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak a global emergency, despite the spread of the dangerous respiratory infection from China to at least five other countries.” (NYT)
Jan 24 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! (Trump tweet.)
Jan 28 According to HHS Secretary Azar, China rejected assistance offer from the CDC made Jan 6. Azar also said the US was a low risk and masks were not necessary. He also said China;s response to Corona was much better than its response to SARS in 2002-2003.(Fox)
Jan 28 CDC raised its travel advisories for China to level 3. (Fox)
Jan 28 WHO congratulates China for its rapid response and transparency. (Fox)
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.” — Trump in a speech in Michigan.
Feb 5 “ WHO said "We are not in a pandemic. We will try to extinguish the transmission in each of these (locations)," …. the agency has enforced sufficient containment measures already to prevent transmissions, however, she admitted the task was challenging due to global travelers.” (Medical Daily)
Feb. 7: “Nothing is easy, but [Chinese President Xi Jinping] … will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone.” (Trump tweet)
Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” — Trump at the White House.
Feb. 14: “There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm — historically, that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not sure yet. But that’s around the corner.” — Trump in speaking to National Border Patrol Council members.
Feb 20 WHO reports the virus is not yet a pandemic
Feb. 23: “We have it very much under control in this country.” — Trump in speaking to reporters.
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — Trump in a tweet.
Feb. 24 the Trump administration requested $2.5 billion to address the coronavirus outbreak.
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump at a White House briefing.
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump at a press conference. Note that as of this morning (April 15) over 26,000 Americans have died from the virus.
Feb. 26: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” — Trump at a press conference, when asked if “U.S. schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump at a White House meeting with African American leaders.
Feb. 27: “Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!”
Feb. 29: “And I’ve gotten to know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well. Everything is really under control.” — Trump in a speech at the CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C.
March 4: “[W]e have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people [from a cruise ship]. … We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” — Trump at a White House meeting with airline CEOs.
March 4: “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number.” — Trump in an interview on Fox News, referring to the percentage of diagnosed COVID-19 patients worldwide who had died, as reported by the World Health Organization. (See our item “Trump and the Coronavirus Death Rate.”)
March 6 WHO sends rapid response teams to Italy.
March 6: “I think we're doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down... a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful. They are perfect just like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: "I like this stuff. | really get it. People are surprised that | understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe | have a natural ability. Maybe | should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.” — Trump, when asked by reporters if he was concerned about the arrival of the coronavirus in the Washington, D.C., area.
March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” — Trump in a tweet.
March 10: “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” — Trump after meeting with Republican senators.
March 11 WHO declares it’s a pandemic. ““We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” the WHO’s chief said.” (CNBC)
March 13: National Emergency Declaration
March 17 “This is a pandemic,” President Donald Trump said at a March 17 press conference. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” ( WP Fact checker)
March 22. Italy’s death toll was reaching vast heights, yet flights from Rome continued to arrive at JFK International Airport.
Clearly, by attacking WHO, an organization with zero power to force any country to do anything, wannabe King (“I have authority to do anything, total authority”) Trump has embarked on a campaign to convince people that his lack of reaction to the virus was all the fault of WHO. The evidence suggests otherwise.
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