“You’ve Got 30 Days”: Trump Threatens To Permanently Pull US Money, Cancel WHO Membership If Reforms Aren’t Made

As it turns out, two “scoops” reported by Axios’ reporter Jonathan Swan over the last few days about President Trump’s intensifying animosity toward the WHO turned out to be correct. Though, given the escalating rhetorical clash between China and the US, it’s really not all that surprising to learn that President Trump’s weekend remarks were a mere momentary lapse – and that the White House is cranking up the pressure on the China-centric NGO as the “blame game” between China and the US continues to escalate.

In a tweet sent late last night, President Trump shared a letter the US had sent to the WHO warning the organization that the US could permanently withdraw funding and cancel its membership if the WHO didn’t meet its demands.

“It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China.”

“My administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste.”

Trump’s political opponents have decried Trump’s aggressive criticisms of the WHO, and accused him of trying to slough off blame for his “poor” handling of the outbreak on China and the WHO. But these same opponents appear unable or unwilling to understand that the WHO issued a glowing report praising China’s handling of the outbreak in the early days, and – even more irresponsibly – stood by China when its scientists declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, even as the numbers in Wuhan had started to balloon.

This is the letter sent to Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization. It is self-explanatory! pic.twitter.com/pF2kzPUpDv

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2020

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Trump listed several specific examples of how the WHO failed in its duty to stop the outbreak from spreading:

• On January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization gratuitously reaffirmed China’s now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans, stating: “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.” This assertion was in direct conflict with censored reports from Wuhan.
• On January 21, 2020, President Xi Jinping of China reportedly pressured you not to declare the corona virus outbreak an emergency. You gave in to this pressure the next day and told the world that the coronavirus did not pose a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Just over one week later, on January 30, 2020, overwhelming evidence to the contrary forced you to reverse course.
• On January 28, 2020, after meeting with President Xi in Beijing, you praised the Chinese government for its “transparency” with respect to the coronavirus, announcing that China had set a “new standard for outbreak control” and “bought the world time.” You did not mention that China had, by then, silenced or punished several doctors for speaking out about the virus and restricted Chinese institutions from publishing information about it.

And here are a few other topics that the letter touches on:

Travel ban double-standard

The letter points out that Tedros “strongly praised China’s strict domestic travel restrictions, but were inexplicably against my closing of the United States border, or the ban, with respect to people coming from China. I put the ban in place regardless of your wishes,” stating that the WHO director’s “political gamesmanship on this issue was deadly, as other governments, relying on your comments, delayed imposing life-saving restrictions on travel to and from China.”

Taiwan

Shortly after Beijing made its initial report to the WHO (via the WHO’s office in Beijing) just before New Year’s, Taiwan followed up by reporting evidence of human-to-human transmission, which Beijing has continued to deny. These warnings were promptly ignored for political reasons. If the world had known the truth just a couple of weeks earlier (when the WHO should have known) action could have been taken to more swiftly shut down travel from China, as vacationers preparing for the Chinese New Year helped spread the virus around the globe.

Trump gets personal

Bringing it home, Trump slams Tedros as incompetent – writing that “Just a few years ago, under the direction of a different Director-General, the World Health Organization showed the world how much it has to offer. In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China.

“Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example,” said Trump.

In closing, Trump gave the WHO 30 days to commit to “substantive improvements” or he will make the temporary freeze of US funding to the organization permanent, as well as “reconsider our membership in the organization.”

* * *

Meanwhile, the WHO’s obsequiousness toward China remains a puzzling mystery for many. With the US providing 4x more funding for the organization than China, Dr. Tedros’ apparent fealty to Beijing – despite the fact that President Xi’s government deliberately lied to the WHO multiple times, the director-general still felt it appropriate to invite him to deliver the keynote at the organization’s annual meeting.

Not only has the Trump administration threatened to withdraw from the WHO, it has also opposed a resolution to set aside patent laws to allow impoverished countries to produce their own vaccines and drug companies.

Beijing rebutted Trump’s letter TUesday morning as a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry slammed the move as “futile”.

We suspect Dr. Tedros doesn’t see it that way.

Tedros reading this pic.twitter.com/FizdiCbhQ0

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) May 19, 2020

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Read the entire letter below:

The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.

By no later than December 30, 2019, the World Health Organization office in Beijing knew that there was a “major public health” concern in Wuhan. Between December 26 and December 30, China’s media highlighted evidence of a new virus emerging from Wuhan, based on patient data sent to multiple Chinese genomics companies. Additionally, during this period, Dr. Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told China’s health authorities that a new coronavirus was causing a novel disease that was, at the time, afflicting approximately 180 patients.

By the next day, Taiwanese authorities had communicated information to the World Health Organization indicating human-to-human transmission of a new virus. Yet the World Health Organization chose not to share any of this critical information with the rest of the world, probably for political reasons.

The International Health Regulations require countries to report the risk of a health emergency within 24 hours. But China did not inform the World Health Organization of Wuhan’s several cases of pneumonia, of unknown origin, until December 31, 2019, even though it likely had knowledge of these cases days or weeks earlier.

According to Dr. Zhang Yongzhen of the Shanghai Public Health Clinic Center, he told Chinese authorities on January 5, 2020, that he had sequenced the genome of the virus. There was no publication of this information until six days later, on January 11, 2020, when Dr. Zhang self-posted it online. The next day, Chinese authorities closed his lab for “rectification.” As even the World Health Organization acknowledged, Dr. Zhang’s posting was a great act of “transparency.” But the World Health Organization has been conspicuously silent both with respect to the closure of Dr. Zhang’s lab and his assertion that he had notified Chinese authorities of his breakthrough six days earlier.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly made claims about the coronavirus that were either grossly inaccurate or misleading.