WHO ‘Quietly Negotiated’ Deal That ‘Sidelined Its Own Experts’ From Investigating Coronavirus Origin In China: Report

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) reportedly hid concessions that it made to communist China about how it would conduct investigations into the origin of the coronavirus and, in doing so, may have ruined the best opportunity that researchers had into discovering where it came from.

The New York Times reported that a team from the WHO arrived in Beijing in mid-February to begin investigating the origin of the coronavirus. Pinpointing where viruses originated and how they jumped from animals to humans can be critical at preventing future outbreaks.

“What the team members did not know was that they would not be allowed to investigate the source at all. Despite [Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency director]’s pronouncements, and over the advice of its emergency committee, the organization’s leadership had quietly negotiated terms that sidelined its own experts,” The New York Times reported. “They would not question China’s initial response or even visit the live-animal market in the city of Wuhan where the outbreak seemed to have originated.”

The Times noted that communist China has “impeded” investigations into the origin of the pandemic and that the WHO has “pushed misleading and contradictory information about the risk of spread from symptomless carriers.”

The Times added that the WHO “has refused to disclose details of its negotiations with Beijing and hasn’t shared documents with member states outlining the terms of its investigations.”

A separate report in September from the Times revealed that the WHO made its decision to advise nations to not restrict travel based on political decisions and not science.

The Times reported:

Public health records, scores of scientific studies and interviews with more than two dozen experts show the policy of unobstructed travel was never based on hard science. It was a political decision, recast as health advice, which emerged after a plague outbreak in India in the 1990s. By the time Covid-19 surfaced, it had become an article of faith.

“It’s part of the religion of global health: Travel and trade restrictions are bad,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who helped write the global rules known as the International Health Regulations. “I’m one of the congregants.”

Covid-19 has shattered that faith. Before the pandemic, a few studies had demonstrated that travel restrictions delayed, but did not stop, the spread of SARS, pandemic flu and Ebola. Most, however, were based on mathematical models. No one had collected real-world data. The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the latest coronavirus is still not understood.

The WHO’s response to the pandemic and their failure to hold communist China accountable for its lying and cover-up led to President Donald Trump withdrawing from the organization earlier this year.

Trump has repeatedly battered the WHO on social media.

“The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric,” Trump wrote. “We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

In another tweet, Trump included a letter that he sent to WHO Director Dr. Ghebreyesus informing him that the U.S. was suspending its funding of the organization.