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Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#51

Post by ksk »

0xy wrote: post #6
wazokazi wrote: post #2

Could this not have waited a few months? In the middle of an pandemic, to cut off funding to the only organization that is coordinating the global response is just crazy. The pettiness of this administration seems to know no bounds. Even if we accept that WHO screwed up in their early response and yeah they could be critical of China, cutting funding is wildly disproportionate reaction. China will offcourse make up t…

Why do you think that the WHO bears no responsibility for spreading misinformation? Often times they simply repeat CCP propaganda verbatim, arguably worsening the crisis. Then there's the flagrant lies about masks, calling travel bans ineffective then scrambling to change tone, delaying declarations of status, etc etc. https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152 The WHO also isn't really doing anything on the…

>The WHO also isn't really doing anything on the ground

I'm curious, how are you so certain about this?

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#53

Post by aeternum »

henearkr wrote: post #19
cjbprime wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only "better than nothing at all" if you assume that any action it could take is better than doing nothing. That doesn't seem to have been true recently to me. Was https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=19 better than nothing?

WHO advised the world to perform as many tests as possible. And that was an excellent advice, only it was ignored and not taken seriously. That's an example where the WHO is not the problem but its enforcement capability (just the same problem with UN decisions on war zones, which can never be enforced). To solve that, a reform is needed. But absolutely not by cutting its funds, which is silly.

'As many tests as possible' is useless advice. Imagine if GDPR said companies should make data as secure as possible or NHTSA said make cars as safe as possible.

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#55

Post by netsharc »

0xy wrote: post #17
draw_down wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lack a lot of context here, but I recently saw a tweet of theirs from January. It was jarring to see how much they uncritically went along with China’s narrative about the virus. I understand a lot about the situation is unprecedented and especially in early weeks there was a lot of confusion and a lot of unknowns. But hopefully this at least will spur them to act more cautiously in regard to info from China.

I don't think their behavior is redeemable, given they continue to lie. After all, the WHO Director-General claimed within the last week without a shred of evidence that he was subject to racist and derogatory attacks from Taiwan's leaders. This is after WHO threw Taiwan under the bus and denied them access to critical health information on the express orders from China. The entire organization is corrupt. Blindly re…

Counterpoint: imagine an international organisation's leader having to stroke Trump's ego to be allowed access into the country. Now replace Trump with Xi. Apparently that's what happened, if this analysis is to be believed: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/trump-turns-...

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#56

Post by henearkr »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #33
henearkr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "their recommandations", you are alluding to when they said that travel bans on China where ineffective (that's true, only complete border closure is effective), and to when they said there was no proof of human-human transmission (that was true when they said it, nobody knew yet, except some Chinese scientists prevented from speaking by their government). I see a lot of these deformed affirmations...

Taiwan warned the WHO about human to human transmission on December 31st: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3904054

I searched for the sources, and all that I found is that Taiwan asked WHO more investigation and verification of China's affirmation. Taiwan did not add any study results or scientific knowledge, so had nothing to really "warn" about.

The China "results" were actually biased, so Taiwan was right to ask verification, but that's only retrospectively. At the time, there was no such certainty of their wrongdoing, especially given that they also collaborated by other means.

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#57

Post by netsharc »

cjbprime wrote: post #15
_bxg1 wrote: post #14

Lots of commenters have pointed out a pattern of increasing failures and shortcoming by the WHO, which I wasn't aware of, but I still have to think: don't we need a centralized touchstone for these kinds of crises? Even if the WHO needs to be dismantled and rebuilt, isn't a dysfunctional one better than nothing at all?

It's only "better than nothing at all" if you assume that any action it could take is better than doing nothing. That doesn't seem to have been true recently to me. Was https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=19 better than nothing?

> Trump and his supporters have focused on a 14 January WHO tweet reporting the findings of preliminary Chinese studies suggesting “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission.

> While the WHO was obliged to report on the latest findings of a member state at the source of the outbreak, its officials told their counterparts in technical briefings on 10 and 11 January, and briefed the press on 14 January, that human-to-human transmission was still a strong possibility given the experience of past coronavirus epidemics and urged suitable precautions.

> [Gavin Yamey, the director of Duke University’s center for policy impact in global health] said it was ridiculous to point to a single tweet early in the pandemic as the fixed position of the WHO. “The whole point of science is that we have initial hypotheses and initial ideas, and we update those ideas as more and more data emerges,” he said.

(From https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/trump-turns-...)

If orgs/people are punishable due to single tweets, how do you rate Trump's performance? He has several tweets that contributed to 25K deaths..

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#58

Post by henearkr »

MR4D wrote: post #46
henearkr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the weight of US in UNO, why would they want to stop their funding, instead of pushing for a reform of WHO? Of course everybody benefits from the existence of an organ like WHO, the only problems would be the number and quality of its experts network and labs. And to reform that, that's in the opposite direction of stopping funds...

At that level, you can most effectively get reform by cutting off funding. Give it a week. Two at the most. You’ll see changes at the headline level.

I doubt it, because the attack lacks seriousness when it's led by Trump.

It is right that WHO should have waited more verification of scientific data before publishing easily misinterpreted too-short statements, on Twitter or elsewhere. But look who is denouncing that.

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#59

Post by nikofeyn »

wazokazi wrote: post #2

Could this not have waited a few months? In the middle of an pandemic, to cut off funding to the only organization that is coordinating the global response is just crazy. The pettiness of this administration seems to know no bounds. Even if we accept that WHO screwed up in their early response and yeah they could be critical of China, cutting funding is wildly disproportionate reaction. China will offcourse make up t…

it is coming from an administration that lies with nearly every word, and they aren't even constructed lies. they are lies equivalent to what you make up on the spot when you forget your proverbial homework. it really isn't surprising. this administration commits treason on a daily basis, as they repeatedly throw the entire country under the bus for their own gain. it is truly sickening.

Re: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

#60

Post by henearkr »

aeternum wrote: post #53
henearkr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHO advised the world to perform as many tests as possible. And that was an excellent advice, only it was ignored and not taken seriously. That's an example where the WHO is not the problem but its enforcement capability (just the same problem with UN decisions on war zones, which can never be enforced). To solve that, a reform is needed. But absolutely not by cutting its funds, which is silly.

'As many tests as possible' is useless advice. Imagine if GDPR said companies should make data as secure as possible or NHTSA said make cars as safe as possible.

No it's a good advice. Because then that would have raised soon an acute awareness about asymptomatic bearers (e.g. through testing a representative sample of the general population), and thus awareness of the necessity of early lockdown.

Also, being able to test anybody who asks it would have dismissed arbitrary criteria that are pushed by governments around the world to minimize the illness. For example in the country where I am, it was until recently difficult to get tested unlike there was an established contact with a tested positive person.

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