This afternoon I got an email from WHO Media:
WHO Statement on False Allegations in Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel reports of a January 21, 2020, telephone conversation between Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and President Xi Jingping of China are unfounded and untrue. Dr Tedros and President Xi did not speak on Jan. 21 and they have never spoken by phone. Such inaccurate reports distract and detract from WHO's and the world's efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic. To note: China confirmed human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on Jan. 20.
Well, that was a surprise, and WHO has repeated the denial on Twitter. I went to Der Spiegel English, which has a couple of recent articles critical of WHO and Dr. Tedros. It may be in this German-language report published on May 8, but most of it is behind a paywall. Wherever the allegations may be, WHO's response is unusual, and I'm not the only one to feel this way: FluTrackers is equally surprised.
A flat-out denial, without providing a context, gives the impression of a stressed organization. Lord knows WHO has reasons to be stressed these days, with everyone take pot-shots at Dr. Tedros and his supposed pliability in Chinese hands. Trump pulling over $1 billion out of WHO's budget, in the midst of a pandemic, hasn't helped.
After 15 years of kibitzing while WHO battled H5N1, H1N1, cholera, H7N9, Zika, and Ebola, I think I understand the constraints the WHO works within. Saying nice things about China isn't as grave an offence, in my view, as WHO's shameful silence about the origins of cholera in Haiti—brought there by a UN "peacekeeping" mission that was really just a US outsourcing of military force to put a lid on a poor and annoyingly fractious country.
Whatever WHO's political lapses, it's what we've got to deal with the first pandemic of the 21st century—and I have no idea how, without it, we'll cope with the later ones. It would be helpful if WHO could remind the world that it's the creation of the UN member nations, and operates within the limits those nations set. It's not some kind of supranational agency that all must obey, and if it tried to be, the UN would disband it.
