With thousands of Americans dying each day from an epidemic that Donald Trump could have prevented if he had only acted just a little sooner, the White House has now moved on to the most important part of any Trump operation: finding scapegoats. All through January, February, and the first half of March, Donald Trump was continually warned about first the possibility, then the probability, then the certainty of a major pandemic sweeping the planet. There was more than ample time to plan for social distancing, prepare for testing, and ready the economy for the shocks ahead. Or … Trump could do half a dozen rallies and spend more than a week on the golf course. Which he did.
Now, having bullied and bogeyed while America burned, Trump is finding that his new motto—“Look at all the Americans I didn’t kill”—is not all that catchy. (Also hard to fit on a hat.) So he needs someone to be on the receiving end of his pointing finger. And since it’s Donald Trump, the ideal candidate for blame is the one that will cause the most possible damage and disruption. Which is why Trump is cutting off funds to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century.
There’s little doubt that the World Health Organization made mistakes over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. When China first told the organization of the outbreak near the city of Wuhan at the end of December, WHO took several days to raise the level of threat appropriately. Later, long after the epidemic had become a pandemic, WHO was inexplicably unwilling to apply that term, apparently out of convoluted concern about actions that could be triggered in response. And all along during the outbreak, from China and around the world, WHO has talked down the possible benefits of wearing a mask as protection, despite a lack of real information on the transmission vectors of the 2019 novel coronavirus.
Still, the World Health Organization was a vital, primary source of information from the moment knowledge of the epidemic became available outside of China. Its daily Situation Reports were the first source of statistics on the spread of the disease at a point when there were only four cases outside the area of origin. The World Health Organization has:
- acted to coordinate the exchange of information about the genetics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
- provided the first tests for the disease available outside of China
- published guidelines for countries, organizations, and individuals
The WHO has also made it absolutely clear from the moment COVID-19 came onto their radar that the disease was highly communicable, the world population was unprotected by any existing immunity, and the threat of the disease was massive and real.
As ProPublica reports, officials in Trump’s own White House warned him of the vital role played by WHO and the foolishness of cutting off funding to the organization at this time. But Trump isn’t listening. It’s more important that he find someone to blame than that he protect the lives of Americans and people around the world.
The chosen someones for his blame appear to be China and the WHO. That’s despite the fact that up until March, Trump was praising both the WHO and China for how they were handling this crisis.
