WHO explains how US was informed of COVID-19 progress
Category: News & Politics
Via: buzz-of-the-orient • 4 years ago • 10 commentsBy: By CHEN WEIHUA in Brussels
Buzz Note: This fits with the Washington Post story - Trump simply wasn't buying the warnings.
"President Donald Trump dismissed as "alarmist" warnings back in January from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar about the threat posed by the novel coronavirus, reported The Washington Post"
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WHO explains how US was informed of COVID-19 progress
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. [Photo/Agencies]
The World Health Organization confirmed on Monday that it has been working very closely with United States COVID-19 experts since the beginning of the outbreak, a rebuke to US President Donald Trump's claim that the WHO did not inform the US of the threat in a timely fashion.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the comment when asked about a Washington Post report on Sunday that US citizens working at WHO transmitted real-time information about the novel coronavirus to the Trump administration.
More than a dozen US researchers, physicians, and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, were working full-time at the Geneva headquarters of the WHO as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, the Post reported, quoting US and international officials.
A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation; something that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials told the Post.
Tedros described the WHO's relationship with the CDC as "long standing" and praised the US institution as a model for the world and for helping the WHO.
"But, at the same time, having CDC staff means that there is nothing hidden from the US from Day One," he said during a virtual news conference from Geneva.
He said the WHO is open, not just to US CDC but all countries and that it wants them to get information in a timely manner.
"There is no secret in WHO because keeping things confidential or secret is dangerous," Tedros said. "It's about lives."
Trump has repeatedly accused the WHO of failing to communicate the extent of the threat posed by COVID-19 and announced last week that he was halting US funding to the global health body.
Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said the WHO has 15 US government representatives embedded with it on COVID-19 since Jan 1, and added that there are two permanent US colleagues on his program, working specially on influenza and epidemic readiness.
"We always have benefited from huge support, particularly from US federal institutions, but also academic institutions and others," he said.
Ryan emphasized that since Jan 1, the WHO has had 15 "details" from the CDC on COVID-19, meaning that 15 CDC staff have been detailed specifically to work with the WHO on COVID-19.
"They have been exceptionally valuable," he said.
Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of the Health Emergencies Programme and a US epidemiologist, said working with colleagues from CDC and the National Institute of Health in the US and academic partners was "very usual for us".
She expressed that since COVID-19 is very closely related to MERS and SARS, the WHO has almost daily communications with CDC colleagues on MERS to apply the expertise on COVID-19 because of the similarities.
"So, it isn't unusual for us to do that," she said.
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I'll bet some CDC staff will be fired by Trump over this.
Why would they get fired if they've been sending warnings this entire time?
Because they can expose his ignoring the warnings. Doesn't Trump fire everyone who doesn't support his incompetence?
The problem is that the CDC was taking signals from the WHO and the WHO was not sending warnings "this entire time":
Jan. 8: The World Health Organization (WHO) declares , “Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks."
Jan. 14: The WHO announces , “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.” Meanwhile, according to The Associated Press , internal Chinese documents show that government officials acknowledged likely human-to-human transmission of coronavirus, and said they were following orders from the president of China.
Jan. 19 : The WHO hedges somewhat: “Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, the clinical features of the disease, the extent to which it has spread, or its source, which remains unknown."
Jan. 31: Trump issues the "Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus." Later in the day, Biden campaigns in Iowa and tells the crowd that Americans “need to have a president who they can trust what he says about it, that he is going to act rationally about it. ... This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Mar. 27: A senior WHO official cuts off an interview after a reporter implies Taiwan, which is not a WHO member state, is independent of China. The official, Canadian doctor Bruce Aylward, initially pretended not to hear the question before terminating the Skype call with the reporter.
As for the CDC:
Jan. 6: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues a "level 1 travel watch — the lowest of its three levels — for China’s outbreak," according to the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. The CDC said the "cause and the transmission mode aren't yet known, and it advised travelers to Wuhan to avoid living or dead animals, animal markets, and contact with sick people." The CDC also offered to send a team to China, but China declined.
The CDC had few test kits and what they did have didn't work. They were totally unprepared for a pandemic.
So IMO the President was right to end funding to the WHO and yes the incompetents at the CDC should be dismissed.
Trump openly stayed that he ever bothered to read the memo telling him about this. He refuses to read anything that might teach him something. An ignorant fool who is worshipped by other ignorant fools.
He fires those he feels are disloyal
I've seen this story from other sources as well and it always leaves the same questions in my mind. If the official public remarks out of WHO were that this was a regional issue and China was doing a great job at containment what were they saying behind closed doors? TBH news stories like this one seem little different than the one where the US Intelligence agencies knew about the Covid-19 pandemic back in November and alerted the White House at the time. My opinion give a news story that actually contains facts rather than generalities that cannot be proven one way or the other.
If it differed, then why didn't the American CDC experts who were there rebuke the public statements. Whistleblowing is popular these days.