Neither China
nor the WHO are to blame for the failures of Trump on
coronavirus
By John Wight
April 24, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - In the midst of a global pandemic Donald Trump has gone
berserk, lashing out with increasing venom at the media
at home for daring to ask uncomfortable questions — his
now customary jeremiads and verbal broadsides against
them a now daily occurrence as he dissembles and
deflects like a man whose meltdown is near complete —
while attacking China and the WHO abroad; more or less
claiming that the latter is an agent of the former, with
the former a dagger pointed at the heart of the world.
In this
the 45th President of the United States has begun to
move perilously close to the ranks of the growing number
of conspiracy theory nuts in our midst, with their
ludicrous assertions as to the origins of coronavirus
and, inter alia, the sinister
agendas of Bill Gates, the Chinese government, the
Illuminati, along with the role of 5G masts in
facilitating its spread. As Trump becomes more embattled
and struggles to answer the justified criticism of his
handling of the crisis, and as his approval numbers dip,
his rampant megalomania makes him evermore susceptible
to the charms of conspiracy theory as a route out of the
reality he’s chosen to divorce himself from.
Facts though, as former US president John Adams so
helpfully put it, are stubborn things; and whatever may
be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our
passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence. And where the World Health Organization is
concerned, the part it has played in warning and helping
to prepare the world for this pandemic, the
facts are as follows:
-
A pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan,
China was first reported to the WHO Country Office
in China on 31 December 2019.
-
The outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency
of International Concern on 30 January 2020.
-
On 11 February 2020, WHO announced a name for the
new coronavirus disease: COVID-19.
January 20th is a crucial date in the trajectory of
coronavirus and the world’s preparedness. For it was on
this day that the Chinese government sent the country’s
top epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, to Wuhan to
investigate a virus which by then was spreading rapidly
through the city’s 11 million people. Dr Nanshan soon
thereafter went on national television to warn the
Chinese people to avoid Wuhan, reporting that
coronavirus was spreading quickly and that doctors were
dying of it. Zhong also revealed that local officials
had attempted to cover up the seriousness of the
contagion, going so far as to infer that the mayor of
Wuhan and rising star within the Chinese Communist
Party, Zhou Xianwang, was a liar.
