Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 127 posts

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

#21

Post by cjbprime »

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.

Thanks, I hadn't known about that. It looks like this advice about tests was given on March 16? My city had already shut down by then due to outbreak.

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

#22

Post by craftinator »

sn41 wrote: post #4

I wish this kind of hard bargaining is postponed till the present crisis is over. A lot of poor people in the world are eager to get back to their normal lives and livelihoods. WHO has been proactive, even though late, in co-ordinating with governments to get serious with their actions.

Self-contradictory.

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

#24

Post by craftinator »

henearkr wrote: post #18
_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?

Most commenters' opinions are based on deformations of what WHO really said. US media seem to negatively interpret the indeciseness of WHO, even if all individual countries' health organizations hardly knew better: at the beginning, very few was known about the virus (partly because China did not share everything they new on it, but that was still not revealed). An example, WHO really said: "Preliminary investigation…

Curious question: what does the WHO do with all of the funding it gets? It receives funding from many nations and individuals, in no small amount. If it doesn't have labs to do testing... What exactly does it do with that funding?

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

#25

Post by henearkr »

cjbprime wrote: post #21
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.

Thanks, I hadn't known about that. It looks like this advice about tests was given on March 16? My city had already shut down by then due to outbreak.

Yes, unfortunately, as all UN parts, the WHO is a consensus organ, at the barycenter of individual countries' participating scientists... meanwhile, in countries or cities better connected with their experts, or just with better experts, the reaction is better and faster.

The exact quote was: "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test."

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

#26

Post by henearkr »

craftinator wrote: post #24
henearkr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most commenters' opinions are based on deformations of what WHO really said. US media seem to negatively interpret the indeciseness of WHO, even if all individual countries' health organizations hardly knew better: at the beginning, very few was known about the virus (partly because China did not share everything they new on it, but that was still not revealed). An example, WHO really said: "Preliminary investigation…

Curious question: what does the WHO do with all of the funding it gets? It receives funding from many nations and individuals, in no small amount. If it doesn't have labs to do testing... What exactly does it do with that funding?

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 countries, by direct investment.

I suspect that it is also directed towards communication and information. Like teaching the developping world the known techniques to mitigate malaria, the primary hygienic gestures's importance (like using soap to wash hands), etc. 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)

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

#27

Post by henearkr »

ericb wrote: post #23

Weren't the only working tests originally from WHO? If the US had used them, wouldn't we have had functional testing much sooner?

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing):

"The World Health Organization adopted the German recipe for manufacturing kits sent to low-income countries without the resources to develop their own. The German recipe was published on 17 January 2020; the protocol developed by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was not available until 28 January, delaying available tests in the U.S."

So, a German lab found the test, and WHO helped manufacturing it in low-income countries.

But, as I said in another comment (only to be downvoted), the WHO is a sum of its participating countries. So everything the WHO finds is actually from some country's lab. That's just how WHO is made.

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

#29

Post by henearkr »

Darmody wrote: post #7

The WHO is a joke. What they did these last months should be the last nail in the coffin. More like a health organization they act like a political one taking sides with China and ignoring/censoring Taiwan even if they managed to control de spread of the virus.[1][2] And if that wasn't enough, they actively insisted that all the measures we're taking now were pointless. Why would anyone want a health organization tha…

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...

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

#30

Post by llamataboot »

0xy wrote: post #10
gowld wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As bad as WHO may be, the US Federal government was and is far worse on all the same points. Swapping in Trump and Kushner for WHO is not an improvement.

As far as I was aware the US government issued a travel ban on China while the WHO was still wrongly claiming travel bans are ineffective. Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china... "Tedros, as he is called, said the WHO does not recommend limiting either trade or travel to China at this time. “In fact, we oppose it,” he said. The health organization said it would question border closures…

Travel bans are not effective unless they can be strict and from everywhere. Like, if you are a small island country that can keep everyone out or do strict quarantine, sure. But the travel ban on China was just theatrics and "microbial theatre" as is evidenced by, uh, reality.
Post reply on HN