'Crime against humanity': Trump condemned for WHO funding freeze

[CousinIT]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/against-humanity-trump-condemned-for-who-funding-freeze

Leading health experts have labelled Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “crime against humanity” and a “damnable” act that will cost lives.

The move also drew a rebuke from the head of the United Nations, who said the WHO was “absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid-19”.

Late on Tuesday Trump declared US funding would be put on hold for 60-90 days pending a review “to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”. The US is the single largest contributor to the WHO.

Trump turns against WHO to mask his own stark failings on Covid-19 crisis

Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, wrote that Trump’s decision was “a crime against humanity … Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, said it was “not the time” to cut funding or to question errors. “Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis,” said Guterres.

“The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future. But now is not that time … It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus.”

Echoing Guterres’s plea, Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, said the WHO did make mistakes and may need reform but that work needed to take place after the crisis had passed. “It’s not the middle of a pandemic that you do this type of thing,” he said.

[calguy]

1. China will be all too eager to fill the void

[dalton99a]

2. Depraved and stupid.

[Newest Reality]

3. Okay...

Let me add that to the Donnie Damnable Acts list...got it right here.

Oh MY! Several pages. Several several pages. Small novel?

Okay, it's on the list.

[Initech]

4. Are you happy conservatives? Are you???

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. A lot of them hate all international organizations

They may just about tolerate NATO, since it's military; but the UN, WHO, UNESCO - some of them literally think they are the Babylon in the book of Revelation. They have conspiracy theories about them.

[tanyev]

6. "the WHO's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus"

Oh, that’s rich.

[gulliver]

7. It's scapegoating, of course, but also a pre-emptive attack against the WHO's judgment of Trump.

Trump is trying to discredit the WHO, because he knows the WHO is going to single him out (justly and with scientific backup) as a bad leader during the pandemic.