Wednesday, April 15, 2020
How not to handle a pandemic
One could be forgiven for thinking that if the giant 111 feet asteroid approaching Earth at 22,500 miles an hour was not going to skim past us, but instead plunge into the Siberian wilderness, causing an Extinction Level Event, Donald Trump's first reaction would be to blame NASA for not stopping it and cut off all their funding.
President Harry S. Truman, kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office with the phrase 'The buck stops here'. That is a concept that appears to be alien to the existing US President. Instead, he uses his press conferences for grandstanding, refusing to answer reasonable questions about his actions, many of which amount to constructive scrutiny that could well improve his administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then seeks out useful scapegoats that enable him to play to the inward-looking vision of much of his base vote.
The latest faux pas from Trump was last night's announcement that the United States is suspending funding to the World Health Organisation, while the his administration reviews what he described as the group’s “disastrous” role in “covering up” the outbreak of the coronavirus in China:
“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion,” Mr Trump said. “The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”
The US president, who has been accused ignoring warnings from his own intelligence agencies of the virus’s severity as well as failing to act in a timely manner, said “delays the WHO experienced in declaring a public health emergency cost valuable time, tremendous amounts of time”.
Mr Trump accused the WHO of “opposing travel bans” and repeating Chinese government “propaganda” that the virus could not be transferred from person to person.
The US leader issues a mild threat to withdraw from the organisation, saying, “we’ll have no choice but to do that”, unless the group changes its actions. The US is the largest financial contributor to the WHO; China is second.
His administration plans to redirect funding meant for the WHO to work with countries on health issues “in other ways”. As usual, he did not describe what those “other” avenues might be.
He repeated his misleading statement that Washington sends the WHO “$400m to $500m” each year. Budget documents show it is closer to just over $100m (£78m) annually. There was no immediate response from the organisation.
There may well be issues with the WHO that need exploring, but the middle of an international health crisis is not the time to be doing it. There will be opportunities afterwards for post-mortems, and recrimination if that is needed, but surely any responsible leader should be looking to bring the international community together and work with responsible bodies, not dismantle the whole apparatus to suit their own agenda.
What Trump has done is to side line the United States on crucial decisions and to give more influence and power to the Chinese, who he is blaming for this pandemic, talk about an own-goal.
President Harry S. Truman, kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office with the phrase 'The buck stops here'. That is a concept that appears to be alien to the existing US President. Instead, he uses his press conferences for grandstanding, refusing to answer reasonable questions about his actions, many of which amount to constructive scrutiny that could well improve his administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then seeks out useful scapegoats that enable him to play to the inward-looking vision of much of his base vote.
The latest faux pas from Trump was last night's announcement that the United States is suspending funding to the World Health Organisation, while the his administration reviews what he described as the group’s “disastrous” role in “covering up” the outbreak of the coronavirus in China:
“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion,” Mr Trump said. “The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”
The US president, who has been accused ignoring warnings from his own intelligence agencies of the virus’s severity as well as failing to act in a timely manner, said “delays the WHO experienced in declaring a public health emergency cost valuable time, tremendous amounts of time”.
Mr Trump accused the WHO of “opposing travel bans” and repeating Chinese government “propaganda” that the virus could not be transferred from person to person.
The US leader issues a mild threat to withdraw from the organisation, saying, “we’ll have no choice but to do that”, unless the group changes its actions. The US is the largest financial contributor to the WHO; China is second.
His administration plans to redirect funding meant for the WHO to work with countries on health issues “in other ways”. As usual, he did not describe what those “other” avenues might be.
He repeated his misleading statement that Washington sends the WHO “$400m to $500m” each year. Budget documents show it is closer to just over $100m (£78m) annually. There was no immediate response from the organisation.
There may well be issues with the WHO that need exploring, but the middle of an international health crisis is not the time to be doing it. There will be opportunities afterwards for post-mortems, and recrimination if that is needed, but surely any responsible leader should be looking to bring the international community together and work with responsible bodies, not dismantle the whole apparatus to suit their own agenda.
What Trump has done is to side line the United States on crucial decisions and to give more influence and power to the Chinese, who he is blaming for this pandemic, talk about an own-goal.
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For once I am in agreement with Donald Trump! The virus was in China long before they announced it to the world. The Chinese Communist Party did not announce it for several weeks and the news did not reach the public domain Dr Li Wenliang brought it to the attention of others. Sadly, Dr Li would later become a victim of Covid-19. Even more disturbingly, when the CCP acknowledged there was a problem, they suspended all internal travel from Wuhan to other cities but did not suspend international flights until it had spread to other nations. The World Health Organisation did not criticise the CCP for their actions ; instead, they actually praised China for the way they handled the crisis.
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