Wednesday 8 April 2020

for some reason, funded largely by the united states, yet very china centric

Employing much the same garbage rhetoric as he used to announce the US withdrawal from the Universal Postal Union, Trump—having ignored or disdained the pandemic outbreak of corona virus for months squandering valuable time—is telling the United Nations’ agency, the World Health Organisation, yesterday on UN World Health Day, that it “really blew it” on the deadly disease and is threatening to withhold funding.
The WHO identified a localised cluster of a novel influenza-like illness back in November and began monitoring the situation, declaring an international health emergency on 30 January prompted countries to act in the ensuing six weeks to include restriction on movement, curfews, lockdowns and social distancing. America however failed to take the matter with any gravity until the past two weeks and the message and mitigating measures implemented have been uneven and sloppy at best. While the WHO and other supranational entities may have to blunt their criticism of their backers (the US contribution to the woefully underfunded yet agile and effective WHO is about fourteen percent of its operating budget—less than a billion dollars biannually), the accusation and threat have nothing to do with the UN’s stance towards China but only in the desperate search for another scapegoat for his own seriously blowing it that will result in tens of thousands of deaths that could have been avoided.