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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

#61

Post by Rury »

netsharc wrote: post #55
0xy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Which seems obvious. The WHO is just an intermediating body between nations. As so, it's not surprising politics is in play behind the core of the organization...

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

#62

Post by henearkr »

Rury wrote: post #45
Fjolsvith wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=19 better than nothing? You do realize you linked to a January 14th tweet by the WHO stating: 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. What exactly did they do?

>What exactly did they do? I think that was the point. They didn't do anything of real substance, so was it better than doing nothing? To me, it appears equivalent to doing nothing, and that's not better than doing nothing...

So their wrongdoing was to tweet their current status?

Yes easily misinterpreted short-phrased tweets are bad. Thanks to US president, we learned that.

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

#63

Post by henearkr »

klipt wrote: post #37
henearkr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After searching on WHO site, it seems that they do surveys of each countries health system, and pushing them to develop steady healthcare systems, and to adapt their practices to available medical knowledge. The pushing of WHO to develop healthcare available including to the poorest may have been what Trump disliked, after all. The WHO seems to compensate partly for the absence of universal healthcare in the poorest…

> And of course the importance to have protected sex to fend off AIDS, etc. (which is an upstream battle given the religious and traditions resistance to many of these advises) Like when the Republicans wasted billions of dollars promoting abstinence as the solution to AIDS: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/05/03/4766011...

That's happens when launching one-sided projects from some particular country's ideology, instead of going through consensual WHO projects.

The AIDS projects from WHO would never dare consider abstinence. They already have the hardest job countering all the traditions and superstitions, even for the simplest thing as not to kiss the dead relatives, so how could they succeed in asking people not to have sex?

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

#64

Post by nikofeyn »

aeternum wrote: post #34
throwaway48472 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy was one of the first countries to issue a travel ban on Chinese travelers. South Korea never issued a travel ban. In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country.

>In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country. This is not true. A ban on a specific country cannot eliminate the risk but it can still slow the spread just like any mitigation.

there are plenty of ways to slow the spread that doesn't unnecessarily break up families, keep people away from their jobs, create job loss, keep people stranded, and harbor poor goodwill towards another country. the travel ban has uprooted lives, and now here we are, and the u.s. government is still phoning this in. the travel ban against china was a pointless exercise in political posturing and akin to a clam's defense strategy. it isn't a big surprise that the virus still got here, primarily from europe, and we weren't even aware of it because the u.s. wasn't testing nor were they tracking, the two things that have time and time again shown to be extremely effective.

there are plenty of models that quarantining the source only does not work. china even proved this. the initial quarantine of wuhan only was not working, so they had to expand it to everywhere. south korea showed testing and tracking worked better than shutting down travel.

the u.s. travel ban against china was ineffective. however, it will now continue indefinitely because the u.s. is in the middle of a shit show, and this will continue to harm people and businesses affected by the travel ban. it will add months if not years of delays to visa processing everywhere.

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

#66

Post by IfIEverCatchYou »

nikofeyn wrote: post #59
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.

If you haven't already, would you mind reading about HN's approach to comments and site guidelines?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#67

Post by Rury »

henearkr wrote: post #62
Rury wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What exactly did they do? I think that was the point. They didn't do anything of real substance, so was it better than doing nothing? To me, it appears equivalent to doing nothing, and that's not better than doing nothing...

So their wrongdoing was to tweet their current status? Yes easily misinterpreted short-phrased tweets are bad. Thanks to US president, we learned that.

I don't think they did anything necessarily wrong with that tweet. Just that it wasn't substantial.

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

#68

Post by IfIEverCatchYou »

_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?

> don't we need a centralized touchstone for these kinds of crises?

This is like saying the governors should be ceding control to the federal administration.

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

#69

Post by IfIEverCatchYou »

netsharc wrote: post #57
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?

> 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 hu…

> He has several tweets that contributed to 25K deaths..

Cut his funding!

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

#70

Post by henearkr »

Rury wrote: post #67
henearkr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So their wrongdoing was to tweet their current status? Yes easily misinterpreted short-phrased tweets are bad. Thanks to US president, we learned that.

I don't think they did anything necessarily wrong with that tweet. Just that it wasn't substantial.

But does it justify to cut their funds?

They published a status of non-knowledge, easily misinterpreted. And sometimes later they published more alarmist statuses. It is quite normal to be wrong sometimes, even in science-related establishments.

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