WHO defunding

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watermanMD

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Please help me understand this.
1) Funding comes in 2 year cycles, right? So we should be good for a bit?
2) Why? Like, really. Why?
If you agree w/ defunding, explain yourself.
If you disagree, please state why. For good measure, can those who disagree also try to post one plausible explanation why it ‘may’ have been an acceptable idea to defund the worlds leading public health organization in a pandemic.
 
What are there, 194 total nations affiliated with WHO? Maybe they kick in a LOT more money, instead of riding coattails? There are mandated donations from countries (dues, as it were), but 75% of the budget is voluntary contributions from countries above their dues. The US provides 20% of the budget. The other 193, the remaining 80%. The "one percent", indeed! (Yes, I know, the last two sentences weren't sentences.)

And, I think it was the Washington Post (not Trump's friend) that outlined how the WHO DG fully supported China, acknowledging their clarity and openness, even when provably shown that the Chinese were lying/concealing/"cooking the books". He doubled down on backing the Chinese.

The UK, Germany, France, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea - they all have the population and wealth (that's how the WHO assigns dues) to give a LOT more. Maybe they actually should.
 
Screw em. From a libertarian mindset, we never should have started funding them. And individual who believes in the mission can write a check from their own bank account

I thought the first casualty of covid was libertarianism
 
Disease and pandemics do not obey borders or national laws. It is stupid, incredibly short sighted decision, which is what you expect from the administration that defunded our pandemic response infracture.
 
The world (except the Chinese government)

As recently as mid-January, the WHO was parroting the communist party line that human-human transmission was not a factor. It is interesting how the narrative around the origin of this outbreak has evolved. That cost us weeks of prevention leading to thousands of lives lost:


Now, what was once dismissed as a birther/truther level conspiracy theory is a plausible explanation being suppressed by social media platforms with strong financial ties to the CCP.


I’m not saying that SARS-Cov-2 is an escaped bioweapon. However, there is absolutely no reason why we should take on faith the narrative being put forth by the CCP and the WHO about how this pandemic began.
 
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As recently as mid-January, the WHO was parroting the communist party line that human-human transIt is interesting how the narrative around the origin of this outbreak has evolved. That cost us weeks of prevention leading to thousands of lives lost:


...and as recently as late January Trump was praising Xi...

"China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi! "

 
...and as recently as late January Trump was praising Xi...

"China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi! "



Yep. Too bad the Dems can’t produce a candidate who can remember his own name. Between Pelosi talking about her ice cream fetish in front of her Wolf sub-zero freezers and Biden’s inability to stick to a teleprompter, the Dems do a great job of making Trump seem competent. I’d like to think that we deserve better, but then reality sets in...
 
Biden has reached "nursing home" level of blather.
You ask him how he feels about the implication of lowering interest rates on (whatever), and he replies with:
"You know, I'm not sure I'm that interested in tomato soup. Let me tell you of the time when I used to swim in the old creek by the city dump."

Better yet; here's some footage of Biden trying to answer a question about his domestic economic policy during a recent interview:


 
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Please help me understand this.
1) Funding comes in 2 year cycles, right? So we should be good for a bit?
2) Why? Like, really. Why?
If you agree w/ defunding, explain yourself.
If you disagree, please state why. For good measure, can those who disagree also try to post one plausible explanation why it ‘may’ have been an acceptable idea to defund the worlds leading public health organization in a pandemic.

Don't just naively suck up the explanations of members of the media who get wined and dined and sometimes outright kickbacks from organizations they cover. WHO wants it's no-strings-attached gravy train from the US taxpayers to continue. This is my explanation of not why it "may," be an acceptable idea, and if fact is a must, to defund the WHO. This explains the method:


Why would you dislike that?

WHO will get their money. Call it intimidation, call it extortion, but this is how the big boys use leverage to get an organization you're the #1 funder of, to comply with your requests. If you just keep dumping money into an organization, then beg them to do what you want after the fact, you get nothing like a fool. If you withhold it, then say, "You can get your money back, if ..." you're much more likely to get your money's worth and the response you want. It's called Effective Persuasion 101.

Leaders of U.K., Australian and US are all in agreement that WHO's fight against their early travel bans stunk like a 20-day-old dead fish, and had no basis in "promoting world health." Even liberal Washington Post is now starting to admit COVID-19 was a royal --ck up by China & their Wuhan lab on the level of Chernobyl. Today, Washington Post: "State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab" (If paywall, read summary of WaPo article in Forbes.)




(1- Australia, 2- U.K. )

These are the reasons it's needed, not why defunded the WHO 'may' be needed, but is a must:

For those of you upset our President is playing hardball with WHO, this is a really good article from Washington Post, hardly a Trump-centric newspaper, that details how China lied about human-to-human transmission, detained and intimidated doctors who were trying to warn and how the World Health Organization parroted the lies being told by China, despite severe evidence they were not being forthcoming. Whole article below, it you face a paywall.



"China Coronavirus: Trump's Critique of WHO's Response to the Pandemic Is Not Entirely Wrong"

President Trump is not happy with the World Health Organization. He is not the only one. On Tuesday, in the middle of a global pandemic, Trump announced that he is freezing funding to the United Nations agency, pending a review of its coronavirus response. To many, Trump’s allegations sound like an opportunistic effort to deflect from criticism of his slow response to combating the virus. But there is some truth to them.

In the early days of the crisis, the WHO amplified Chinese claims and figures without signaling that they could be inaccurate. The organization was slow to address the risk of human-to-human transmission, slow to declare a public health emergency and slow to use the term pandemic.

Yet it was quick to praise Beijing. As evidence mounted that China silenced whistleblowers and undercounted cases, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, continued to heap compliments on Beijing and dodged questions about worrying problems with the Chinese response.

“You had the authority, you had the ability to challenge China, to question China as to what they were doing, and you needed to do that for global health,” said David Fidler, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has written about and worked with the WHO for years, referring to the organization. “You failed to do it.”

Criticism about how the WHO handled China is resonating well beyond the White House. Japan’s deputy Prime Minister recently called the WHO the “China Health Organization.” Nearly 1 million people have signed an online petition calling for Tedros to resign.

This is partly a problem of expectations. The Geneva-based organization does many things well, but it is not particularly well-equipped to guide the world through a pandemic.

The agency, founded in 1948, does best when it is advocating for primary health care and essential medicine, particularly in the developing world. In an emergency — when decisive action is necessary — it can coax and cajole but it cannot compel its members to do much. It also cannot issue fines for noncompliance, for instance.

The organization has been widely praised for some of its technical work during the coronavirus pandemic, most notably quickly distributing a test to more than 70 laboratories worldwide — a test the United States chose not to use. The WHO also has shipped almost 2 million protective gear items to 74 countries, Tedros said, and plans to ship more.

It is not surprising to some who support the WHO’s mission that Trump has chosen to focus exclusively on the organization’s apparent failings during this pandemic. “I think it’s a diversion from the fact that the U.S. did not respond as aggressively or as appropriately as we should have,” said Jimmy Kolker, a former U.S. ambassador who served as assistant secretary for global affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services until 2017.

“There are lots of reasons for that,” he continued. “A minor one is that some of the information about what was happening in China was withheld longer than it should have been.”

But even the organization’s defenders, including current and former advisers, have questioned why the WHO kept lending credibility to China when it could have expressed more skepticism.

“That is what should have happened,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, who also provides technical assistance to the WHO. “That was WHO’s responsibility.”

A WHO spokesman put the onus on member states to provide truthful information.

“WHO expects all its member states to report data in a timely and accurate manner,” said Tarik Jasarevic, the WHO spokesman. “We have from the very beginning urged all countries to share data in a timely fashion, and we continue to do so.”

Public health advocates responded strongly after Trump’s announcement and worried that the funding freeze could have a catastrophic impact. According to the State Department, the United States has committed to provide the WHO with $893 million during its current two-year funding period. (China has committed to $86 million during the same period.)

“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds,” Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tweeted Wednesday. “Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.” Even those who have been critical of the WHO urge the Trump administration to reconsider.

German lawmaker Norbert Röttgen called the organization’s treatment of China “concerning” but said those concerns should be addressed when the crisis is over. This is not the time to freeze funding, he said in a tweet. Doing so “will harm those countries most that are least equipped to help themselves.”

And a freeze, warned Kristine Lee, an associate fellow at the Center for a New American Security, won’t necessarily lead to results that Trump or his administration would welcome. Trump’s retreat from the WHO, she said, “makes it easier for Beijing to step in.”

The WHO’s approach to emergency response was indelibly shaped by China’s attempts to conceal the 2002 SARS outbreak.

In the wake of that crisis, updated rules empowered the organization to consider non-state sources of information, such as information from nongovernmental groups on the ground, to assess threats. The goal: preventing coverups. It is not clear whether that has worked in the coronavirus case.

In late 2019, Chinese doctors in Wuhan started discussing a SARS-like ailment that was spreading through hospitals. They were detained for spreading rumors and shamed on state television. China notified the WHO on Dec. 31 that there was a mysterious pneumonia in Wuhan. On Jan. 5, the organization issued a statement saying that China had reported 44 cases. Chinese investigators reported no evidence of human-to-human transmission, the WHO statement said, or spread among medical workers.

In a Jan. 14 tweet that Trump referenced last week, the WHO said Chinese authorities had still found “no clear evidence” of person-to-person transmission. There was no hint of skepticism or comment about the detention of doctors.

There were also signs that China was undercounting cases. From Jan. 11 to Jan. 17, for instance, Hubei province, then the epicenter of the outbreak, held a Communist Party conclave. Each day during that time, the Wuhan Health Commission claimed that there were no new infections or deaths. At midnight on Jan. 18, it resumed reporting cases — a gap that raised eyebrows among scientists and researchers.

If the WHO was concerned about the figures, it did not say so. “WHO just routinely repeated as if it were its own information, as if it were verifying it,” said Gostin, the Georgetown law professor.

“WHO is reliant on member states for data, but it could have noted gaps in the data or simply noted that they were not able to independently verify it,” he continued. “By uncritically citing Chinese data, WHO officials lent credibility to information that was false.”

In the meantime, the virus kept spreading, unchecked. It was not until Jan. 20 that Chinese officials acknowledged that the virus was spreading person to person. By that time, Wuhan was in crisis and confirmed cases were in multiple Chinese cities, Japan, Korea, Thailand and — later that day — the United States.

In Geneva, an emergency panel convened to decide whether to declare a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, a post-SARS term that signals a health crisis “that poses a public health risk to other countries through international spread.”

On Jan. 23, while the panelists were gathered, Chinese officials began locking down Wuhan. Officials in Geneva wrestled with whether to declare a PHEIC, weighing Chinese pushback about economic damage and assurances that everything was fine.

The committee was split, but decided that it was not an emergency, surprising public health experts.

The panel waited until Jan. 30 — a full month after Chinese doctors issued a warning — to make the declaration. “The Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken,” said Tedros, the WHO chief. “I left in absolutely no doubt about China’s commitment to transparency.”


Lavishing praise on Beijing

In February and March, as evidence of a coverup intensified, the WHO continued to praised Beijing, baffling some experts.

By late January, for instance, Chinese officials, including the Communist Party chief of Wuhan, were acknowledging that they should have acted sooner. But the WHO and Tedros assured the world that they were doing great.

After meeting privately with Xi on Jan. 28 in Beijing, Tedros not only lauded the country’s handling of the outbreak, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency, but the effectiveness of “China’s system.”

Some argue that all this flattery was strategic to allow an international team of doctors, scientists and observers to enter the country. But when a WHO team finally made it to China in mid-February, Tedros and his team did not modulate their tone.

At a news conference after an international team visited, Bruce Aylward, the head of the mission, called China’s work “stunning,” “extraordinary” and “successful.”

While there were certainly elements of China’s coronavirus response that were worthy of study, WHO watchers were surprised to hear Aylward praising measures, such as travel bans, that the organization has long opposed.

They also wondered why Tedros waited until March 11 to say that covid-19, by then ravaging multiple continents, was a pandemic. In public remarks, the WHO’s leadership sometimes stayed mum on basic matters of human rights.

At one news conference, Tedros was asked about the death of one of the Chinese doctors who sounded the alarm on the virus, only to be detained by police. He first deferred to a colleague, then took the chance to speak. “It is very difficult, given the facts,” he said, “to say that China was hiding.”

In a March 28 interview with Hong Kong’s RTHK, Aylward was asked about the WHO’s position on Taiwan, which is blocked from WHO membership at China’s behest, but has been lauded by public health experts for its decisive and successful efforts to contain the virus. In a now-viral clip, he dodged, declining to answer several times.


In a statement published after the interview, the WHO said the question of Taiwan’s membership is up to members states, not its staff. In an email, a spokesman said the clip was edited to misrepresent Aylward’s remarks.

“I cringe when I see these things,” said Kelley Lee, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who wrote a book about the WHO and co-established the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health. “I can see why people see this as, ‘Wow, what are they hiding?’ ”


A question of credibility

The organization’s messaging has been a boon for conservative critics of multilateral organizations, including Trump.

Former national security adviser John Bolton tweeted Friday that the WHO has been “fully penetrated by the Chinese,” echoing conservative claims that the agency and its leader have been co-opted.

There is no evidence that Tedros is directly acting at Beijing’s behest. Trump echoed the WHO’s praise for China by applauding Beijing’s transparency on Jan. 24, brushed off concerns about a coverup on Feb. 7 and on March 4 said China had the situation under control.

What is striking is the extent to which the WHO’s China messaging has overshadowed more successful elements of its response, eroding the agency’s credibility, just when it needed it most. Some critics have called for the agency to be scrapped altogether. “What would you replace it with?” asked David Heymann, a professor of infectious-disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who also advises the WHO. “Would it ever be possible to have 194 countries agree to a new organization?”

Kelley Lee, the author of the book about the WHO, said the coronavirus pandemic shows the need for a well-funded, capable agency. A robust WHO is “going to be much cheaper than the trillions of dollars we’re seeing splashed out now,” she said.

“It’s pay now or pay later.”

Liz Sly in Beirut and Anne Gearan and Lenny Bernstein in Washington contributed to this report
 
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The world (except the Chinese government)

As an anecdote, I worked overseas on a project that was funded through the WHO.
The communities I worked in absolutely benefited from that work.
I know specifically one of those programs I got a recent update from and they've been doing a lot of covid education, monitoring, providing hygiene supplies, etc in a very rural community. So far there hasn't been an overwhelming amount of people getting sick there. So people have absolutely directly benefited from the work that the WHO does.
You would absolutely find dozens upon dozens of examples of people/communities that have benefited from the WHO.

As much as I dislike the US government and things that have happened over decades here it would be incredibly ignorant for me to say that no one ever has benefited from anything the government has done.
 
Ah yes, somehow we've decided to start projecting Trump's dementia onto Biden. Has anyone listened to his Coronavirus pressors or any of his billion of inane tweets daily?
 
This thread is supposed to be about the threat to defund the WHO. I think the fact that it only took about a dozen posts to shift the topic to Joe Biden's mental faculties (or lack thereof) betrays a deep sense of insecurity on the right.
 
This thread is supposed to be about the threat to defund the WHO. I think the fact that it only took about a dozen posts to shift the topic to Joe Biden's mental faculties (or lack thereof) betrays a deep sense of insecurity on the right.
Or evident lack of faculty....but you know tomatoe-to-mah-toe
 
This thread is supposed to be about the threat to defund the WHO. I think the fact that it only took about a dozen posts to shift the topic to Joe Biden's mental faculties (or lack thereof) betrays a deep sense of insecurity on the right.
You know I respect the absolute hell out of you, but, honestly, this may be the first biased post I've ever seen you put up. I would say, non-partisan, that there is a deep sense of insecurity on the left, too.
 
You know I respect the absolute hell out of you, but, honestly, this may be the first biased post I've ever seen you put up. I would say, non-partisan, that there is a deep sense of insecurity on the left, too.

No question, we've all got insecurities. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
 
As an anecdote, I worked overseas on a project that was funded through the WHO.
The communities I worked in absolutely benefited from that work.
I know specifically one of those programs I got a recent update from and they've been doing a lot of covid education, monitoring, providing hygiene supplies, etc in a very rural community. So far there hasn't been an overwhelming amount of people getting sick there. So people have absolutely directly benefited from the work that the WHO does.
You would absolutely find dozens upon dozens of examples of people/communities that have benefited from the WHO.

As much as I dislike the US government and things that have happened over decades here it would be incredibly ignorant for me to say that no one ever has benefited from anything the government has done.

Whatever good has been done in the past has been far outdone by the catastrophic harm they have caused by carrying the water for the Chinese government by providing them a false sense of credibility while the world suffered
 
Maybe it is just me but with our massive ass debt (I have banged this drum since I learned about it and understood it in my late teens) why are we the world's piggy bank.

The WHO may have helped lots of people around the world. It hasn't necessarily done a ton for the US.

maybe Im wrong.. I do know that there is no reason we should be funding 20% of the who budget. I am ok funding more than most but I dont think we should be the world's piggy bank (or police).
 
Or Inslee, or Warren, or Harris, or...
Let's be honest--Harris is Hilary 2.0. Americans, for all their faults, rightly do not support flip-floppers who seek the most politically expedient option. And Kamala is the most evolved lizard of the 'third way'.

Regarding the WHO, I honestly do not know enough about the issue to say whether the defunding was right or not. To me, it's undoubtable that we should be increasing funding of an international public health organization by at least a factor of 10. Whether or not the WHO is too compromised to be salvaged, I don't know.

But, in general, I don't typically think burning things to the ground and starting from anew is the best option
 
Let's be honest--Harris is Hilary 2.0. Americans, for all their faults, rightly do not support flip-floppers who seek the most politically expedient option. And Kamala is the most evolved lizard of the 'third way'.

Regarding the WHO, I honestly do not know enough about the issue to say whether the defunding was right or not. To me, it's undoubtable that we should be increasing funding of an international public health organization by at least a factor of 10. Whether or not the WHO is too compromised to be salvaged, I don't know.

But, in general, I don't typically think burning things to the ground and starting from anew is the best option
Undoubtable? 10x current spending?
 
The way I see it there are three main benefits to funding international projects/organization:

1. The organization directly benefits us.
2. The organization does good for the world in a way that aligns with our values.
3. Being a partner builds or maintains our soft power.

The WHO failed us or could have done better on the first two counts. But I worry that defunding it will further hamper its mission and lower our standing in the world stage.
 
The way I see it there are three main benefits to funding international projects/organization:
2. The organization does good for the world in a way that aligns with our values.
3. Being a partner builds or maintains our soft power.

Yeah, whatever leverage we had will be lost when we defund the WHO. That said, I still don't have a problem with it, given the conflicts of interests and shady arm twisting that happened with the Bush administration, the who and the sugar lobby in the past.
 
Let's be honest--Harris is Hilary 2.0. Americans, for all their faults, rightly do not support flip-floppers who seek the most politically expedient option. And Kamala is the most evolved lizard of the 'third way'.

Regarding the WHO, I honestly do not know enough about the issue to say whether the defunding was right or not. To me, it's undoubtable that we should be increasing funding of an international public health organization by at least a factor of 10. Whether or not the WHO is too compromised to be salvaged, I don't know.

But, in general, I don't typically think burning things to the ground and starting from anew is the best option
I guess you miss the point that the US provided 20% of their budget. That's not "burning it to the ground". And, as was said above, by me and others, why should "we" (the United States) be the ones paying for it, versus the relative freeloaders in the rest of the world?
 
Yeah, whatever leverage we had will be lost when we defund the WHO. That said, I still don't have a problem with it, given the conflicts of interests and shady arm twisting that happened with the Bush administration, the who and the sugar lobby in the past.

I disagree. It seems like we now have infinitely more leverage.
 
If WHO no longer takes our money, then it doesn't have to do what we want it to do...
 
As an anecdote, I worked overseas on a project that was funded through the WHO.
The communities I worked in absolutely benefited from that work.
I know specifically one of those programs I got a recent update from and they've been doing a lot of covid education, monitoring, providing hygiene supplies, etc in a very rural community. So far there hasn't been an overwhelming amount of people getting sick there. So people have absolutely directly benefited from the work that the WHO does.
You would absolutely find dozens upon dozens of examples of people/communities that have benefited from the WHO.

As much as I dislike the US government and things that have happened over decades here it would be incredibly ignorant for me to say that no one ever has benefited from anything the government has done.

You’re missing the forrest for the trees. No one ever said they don’t do good things. In fact, this is often the problem with a lot of very left leaning ideologies. They are often good ideas, but the question is 1) who’s responsibilities are they and 2) at what cost.

It would be great to fix homelessness and poverty and hunger and aids and cancer and have free college and perfect roads. The problem is that when organizations get large, they bloat. And all of this costs money. How much money are you willing to forcibly remove from tax payers against their will to achieve the ends that you think are important?
 
Pandemics are a world issue also you need international cooperation. If spending is such a big concern cut the military budget way too much spending and way to wasteful
 
The WHO failed in their primary mission, and spectacularly so. Why should we keep funding them when they can't get the basics right?
The Federal Government failed in their primary mission, and specactularly so... so why do I still have to pay taxes?
 
If WHO no longer takes our money, then it doesn't have to do what we want it to do...
WHO doesn't currently don't do what we want. Covering for China during early COVID-19 is a great example. That's the whole point of withdrawing the money, then using the hope of getting it back as leverage to force them to be more responsive to us as the largest donor, as opposed to another lesser donor that's playing better hardball than us. Persuasion 101.
 
The amount of funding the government gives to the WHO (or food stamps, or the $1200 stimulus, or the NIH) is peanuts compared to what goes to the military, or to the change in tax code included in the stimulus). It is idiotic to cut it in a crisis, full stop. Reevaluate once this pandemic is over. It’s disheartening to see so many right wing talking points here, then I remember it’s the same 10 posters all the time, and I go to work in my red state and see that most physicians don’t have FOX news induced brain rot. Now go back to talking about Kamala Harris (she has a lot to do with Trump’s cuts to WHO funding, right?).
 
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