Coronavirus & WHO: Ineptitude, Sycophancy Or Complicity?
Photo – Marta Escurra | @marta_escurra
A. Sivapathasundaram
Need for Truth
To paraphrase the words “To be, or not to be, that is the question” in the opening phrase of a soliloquy uttered by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’, I too ask, “To write or not to write, that is the question”.
The reason is, there seems to be a tendency these days to immediately slot any expression of thoughts or perceptions in words, into pro or anti US or China (or pro or anti President Trump or President Xi Jinpeng) line, without due evaluation.
Unfortunately, this dangerous state of affairs results in no effort for search, analysis and dissection to find the truth. Any possibility of truth emerging is quickly buried in the avalanche of inter power and economic rivalry – nowadays, less by the might of arms but more by the might of money and propaganda.
What the world now undergoing is a human crisis of great magnitude spanning almost all the countries and regions of the world with severe health and socio-economic consequences. Apart from the deep health crisis, the devastating economic consequences on the livelihood of many millions of people across the globe is beyond comprehension and calculations.
Therefore, there is a need for a relentless search at all levels and in all dimensions to find the truth.
In this process, it is important to probe the role of the World Health Organisation (WHO). It is after all the premier health organisation, not of one country but of the world, and whose words and actions should be devoid of ineptitude or inefficiency and any suspicion of partiality or bias to anyone or any country. Any possible culpability on its part in the spread of this virus, directly or indirectly, needs to be judged based on the facts as available to us from the time the coronavirus episode unfolded.
President Trump muddles the matter with his belligerent rhetoric, inconsistent, undiplomatic, temperamental, and erratic statements, unbecoming of a president of a powerful nation; The Chinese authorities with their organised pre-emptive propaganda and actions are deflecting any blame or accusations at their commissions and omissions and avoiding all accountability.
The impending US Presidential elections in November where the Democratic Party opposition in the US will go to any extent to denounce Trump as the only one to blame in order to unseat him would not be helpful either. On the other hand, China’s mode of governance is one that it has no such political compulsions; they can extol their response to this virus with no opposition to face within the country and make inroads again from where they had left.
In addition, the protagonists are employing and unleashing bullying tactics of which we are very familiar with in the case of US; but China too is proving that it is no second or inferior to US in this, as has been recently evidenced. An example is. when the Australian Prime minister Scott Morrison first expressed that he supported the push “for an inquiry to understand how the outbreak started and then spread rapidly around the world”. In response, China threatened Australia that it would stop buying their meat products and wine and impose sanctions on them. Now he is reported to have retracted his earlier position and saying that “he has no evidence to suggest the disease originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan”.
It would seem that with a well-orchestrated political and media campaign supported by their respective allies, US & China are vying to outdo each other in their fight for supremacy.
It may never be possible to really establish the truth, as any attempts to find the ‘truth of it all’ will be side tracked by politicking, propaganda, political point scoring, bias, and the vested interests taking one side or the other and taking strong positions. Those trying to cover up or deflect will always use their power to exert an iron hand, including the necessary propaganda machinery and favourable media to detract or dismiss any attempts to point out what may generally the people are made to conclude as fact or truth or even common sense, based on the events.
However, try, we must!
Ineptitude?
On December 31, 2019, Taiwan emailed WHO and warned that there was human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in Wuhan. WHO chose to ignore it. They did not share that information with other member states and did not initiate enquires on its own on the information received. Taiwan, suspicious that information emerging from China was not accurate enough, had begun screening arrivals from Wuhan and was thus able to minimise the effects of the virus to its people.
On January 13, the Thailand Ministry of Health reported the first recorded case of the outbreak outside China, in a woman who had arrived from Wuhan. Even by mid-January, WHO continued to deny human to human transmission, relying solely on the information provided by China, that its authorities had found no evidence of it. Instead of attempting to independently verify China’s claims, the WHO took them at face value and disseminated them to the world.
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