From the pages of In Business magazine.
High on our post-COVID-19 itinerary, after prepping for a return engagement with the coronavirus this fall, is reforming the World Health Organization. Given the WHO’s dreadful performance during the pandemic and given that it receives 22 percent of its funding from America, we have both the justification and the leverage to demand action that goes beyond putting a hold on funding.
Aside from the obvious fact that the WHO exists to prevent what just happened, let’s count the reasons why.
1. Even after receiving evidence to the contrary, the WHO not only advanced low-balling narratives of authoritarian governments but did not bother to question them. That’s especially true of the Chinese government, which initially hid the outbreak, which started in Wuhan, China, manipulated the data downward, and later blamed the outbreak on the U.S. military.
2. So invested was the WHO in protecting authoritarian regimes, it ignored a warning provided to it by Taiwanese officials. On Dec. 29, 2019, the Taiwanese government told the organization that COVID-19 was contagious through human-to-human transmission. Not only did the WHO ignore this warning, it later published false information to the contrary.
3. The primary reason, however, is that its current leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is too chummy with the communist tyrants who run China, not to mention other authoritarian regimes that don’t have our best interests in mind. At one point, he offered praise for China’s “transparency” during its coronavirus response, despite a mounting volume of evidence that it concealed the severity of the outbreak.
As a result, lives have been lost and lives are still being lost. Economies were damaged and economies are still being damaged.
Speaking of the Chinese Communist Party, its “parade of horribles” has been expanded to include intelligence reports that it prohibited U.S. manufacturers of medical safety gear from exporting their products from China as the pandemic unfolded. Let’s not forget the punishment of Dr. Li Wenliang, who first alerted the world to the escalating crisis only to be sanctioned by Chinese medical authorities. He later died of the virus.
There soon will be ample opportunity for nations to assess their own governments’ failures, but before those assessments begin, America’s leaders have every right to demand the resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus or pull their public financial support. After what we’ve just witnessed, we’re not getting our money’s worth anyway.
Click here to sign up for the free IB ezine — your twice-weekly resource for local business news, analysis, voices, and the names you need to know. If you are not already a subscriber to In Business magazine, be sure to sign up for our monthly print edition here.
