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Why is Trump attacking WHO and trying to re-open the economy?
Trump’s motivations explain these deeply contradictory stances
Having helped build one of the most sophisticated outbreak and communicable disease response and management systems in the world, and having written on Trump’s Presidency several times, I have a set of opinions around this.
WHO is not at fault. China is not at fault.
The early days of outbreaks are deeply uncertain. WHO’s response with 20:20 hindsight is imperfect, but having worked with public health officials and experts closely in the aftermath of SARS, I assure you that they were sweating over making the best decisions they could with deeply limited information. Cases are anecdotes. Outbreaks are statistics. Epidemics and pandemics are statistics. There was far too little information to form high quality conclusions in the timeline.
Blaming WHO is almost entirely inappropriate. Are there key things that they will learn from this and improve upon? Certainly. Blaming China is even worse. Once the Chinese federal government figured out what was going on, they instituted a deeply aggressive response plan and told everyone in the world, including WHO and the USA, what was occurring and the risks. That’s why China has under 100,000 of…
