By Enyeribe Anyanwu
For a president whose country accounts for one-quarter of the world’s 194, 470 recorded death from Coronavirus, and still counting, the utterances and actions of Donald Trump against China and the World Health Organization (WHO) cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. This is more so when available evidence points to utter mishandling and deliberate concealment of facts and information of the outbreak of the virus by Chinese authorities. The country’s concealment of information and clampdown on those who dared to tell the truth or tell the world what was happening aided the spread of the virus which has now destroyed many lives and world economy.
On the part of WHO, the organization was too naïve to have believed the lies from Beijing to the extent of applauding the efforts of the Chinese authorities who were merely deceiving the world about the havoc being wreaked by the virus in Wuhan and other affected areas, thereby discouraging countries which would have taken earlier precaution from doing so, or assisted with medical experts that would have helped to control the situation before it got out of hand.
Trump said the World Health Organization “failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable”. He said the world’s health watchdog promoted China’s “disinformation” about the virus which has led to a wider outbreak. Is Trump right? Let’s check out the facts.
As reported by Laurie Garret in Foreign Policy (FP) on January 15, 2020, “as the novel Coronavirus began to spread, Beijing wasted the most critical resource to fight it: trust. With the title,” How China’s Incompetence Endangered the World,” Garrett wrote to the effect that it was the leadership in China that decided the fate of the virus and how it would spread internationally to become a genuine pandemic.
The writer queried if China’s official reports, including claims that its control efforts were succeeding and the epidemic would soon peak credible? The situation on ground was contrary to the claims being made by China. Earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) had praised the Chinese authorities for their quick, transparent response to the newly named COVID-19, while they blundered through continued cover-ups, lies, and repression that already failed to stop the virus, but rather fanned the flames of the virus spread.
The cover-ups and the repression by the government in China of its citizens that cried out cannot be forgotten. One recalls the ophthalmologist, Li Wenliang, regarded as China’s real epidemic hero, whose death from the virus revealed the ugliest side of the Chinese “terrible effort to rewrite the history of a seemingly out-of-control epidemic.”
As Garrett wrote, Li had treated patients in December in Wuhan, where the outbreak originated, who looked like SARS cases. “‘Days later, for the so-called crime of rumormongering, Li and seven other physicians were brought before China’s security police and compelled to sign a document admitting to “spreading lies.” For days, Wuhan authorities sought to stifle Li’s voice, but even after he caught the virus while treating his patients and was confined to an intensive care unit bed, he continued to sound epidemic alarms on the BBC World Service. On Feb. 6, the once-robust 34-year-old physician died. Li’s death opened the gates of political rage across China, sparking an unprecedented outpouring of grief and outrage, denouncing the government cover-up.”
It should be noted that WHO actually fell for Chinese authority’s antics and lies without trying to find out what was actually going on. It so believed Beijing that it went to sleep for two weeks during which the virus gained a lot of ground. Things were such that there were sharp criticisms and even calls and a petition for the recall of WHO’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for his meetings with Xi and other Chinese leaders and his apparent reluctance to declare the outbreak a global health emergency.
“Between early December and Jan. 19, the chief Chinese Communist Party narrative from local officials in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, was that a very small number of people connected to a local live fish and animal market had become infected with a new virus, causing a few to be hospitalized with pneumonia. Whatever the cause of the sicknesses, it was not SARS or anything like SARS. All released data conveniently suited that narrative. Anybody who, like the physician Li, hinted at facts that countered the narrative was suppressed.
After the official announcement of the new disease on New Year’s Eve, a second narrative took flight, which argued that shutting down the live animal market had effectively eliminated the spread of the disease, as there was no evidence of human-to-human spread of the virus. For two weeks, the official case numbers barely budged and even decreased to 41. The message to the Chinese people was that there was nothing to worry about, local police and health officials had stopped an outbreak, job well done—a scenario accepted by WHO.
Throughout those two vital weeks—time when aggressive control efforts might have stopped the outbreak—the virus was spreading completely independently from the animal market. Throughout those two vital weeks—time when aggressive control efforts might have stopped the outbreak—the virus was spreading completely independently from the animal market, as it had been since at least mid-December. Throughout December and early January, about half of the coronavirus cases in Wuhan were entirely independent of the animal market, and the epidemic was doubling in size weekly. Researchers at Imperial College London reckoned that 1,723 people in Wuhan were infected by Jan. 12, Garrett wrote. Continuing, he said:
“As international anxiety, doubting the containment narrative, grew, and evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus became undeniable, Xi took steps to flush out information. Around the same time, a high-level CCP committee posted a WeChat message (later deleted) that denounced functionaries and bureaucrats who might be suppressing epidemic information, warning, ‘Whoever deliberately delays or conceals reporting for the sake of their own interests will be forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame.’
Not surprisingly, the official narrative suddenly changed, as did the tally of cases and deaths, quadrupling to 198 cases on Jan. 19. In the new narrative, the animal market was no longer mentioned, and Wuhan’s leaders poked fingers of blame at one another for pushing the prior story and put huge sections of the city of 11 million on lockdown,” wrote Garrett.
This should be an eye-opener to those who think that China did well at the onset of the virus. It should also prove that Donald Trump is justified in blaming China and WHO for what the world is currently going through, especially when one remembers that while covering up and deceiving the world, China was even blaming US for its plight.
The decision by Trump to temporarily halt US funding to WHO over its handling of the Coronavirus pandemic should, therefore, be seen as an expression of anger at those who are responsible for the devastation that COVID-19 is wreaking on the world. Trump had presented the freezing of US funding to the WHO as a direct response to what he claims was the organization’s slow reaction in raising the alarm over the global threat from the coronavirus and being too “China-centric” in its response.
Though not funding WHO may not be the best at this time, outright condemnation of Trump’s action cannot pass the test of fairness and accountability. Trump remains a lone voice in a world that the forces of darkness are striving hard to take full control.
All the world leaders and even some of his fellow countrymen have condemned his action in very strong terms. But that does not detract from the truth. Trump is already immune to sharp criticisms, and being misunderstood. But he continues to do what he believes is right.
The US President has even said that his government was trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, in central China. But WHO has maintained that the virus came from animal origin.
“All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed virus in a lab or somewhere else,” WHO spokeswoman, Fadela Chaib, said at a press briefing in Geneva. “It is probable, likely that the virus is of animal origin.” She maintained.
Of all the vituperations and criticisms that poured in following Trump’s withdrawal of the WHO funding, the only sane words were spoken by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Morrison said he sympathized with Trump’s criticisms of the WHO, especially its support of reopening China’s “wet markets” where freshly slaughtered animals are sold and where the outbreak first appeared in the city of Wuhan late last year.
“But that said, the WHO also as an organization does a lot of important work including here in our region in the Pacific and we work closely with them,” Morrison said. We are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here, but they are also not immune from criticism and immune from doing things better.”
I quite agree with Scott Morrison. We cannot throw the baby away with the bathwater. It is already a bad situation, and the world should be united in finding a solution. The approach to Trump’s decision should be appeal for him to see reason why halting funding to the World Health Organization is not wise at this critical moment, at the peak of the fight against the pandemic, instead of demonizing him or calling him names. Withdrawal of funding for WHO and condemnation of Trump –none of them is helpful to a world already in a hopeless situation.
