Yesterday, Trump slammed ‘China-centric’ WHO and tweeted, “The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”
The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020
But Trump is not the only one to criticize WHO, India, too, did the same, although PM Modi did not directly criticize the organization in public, only suggested for reforms.
In dealing with Coronavirus, the countries, which kept WHO at arm’s length like Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and India, have been more successful. Because WHO came out to be a Chinese puppet and its complicit role in Coronavirus spread has taken more lives than the organization saved in its entire existence.
In dealing with the pandemic, India has focused on domestic capabilities like the expertise of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) rather than toeing the WHO line. This is in sharp contrast with earlier times when WHO used to play a major role, in fact, it used to virtually run the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. In India’s fight against TB or in immunization program, the international organization played a critical role.
However, Modi government trusted domestic experts and this strategy has been quite successful, and given the fact that WHO has been critically incompetent in dealing with Coronavirus; trusting the domestic experts is possibly the best thing Modi government has done.
On January 30, WHO’s infamous Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly recommended to not put ban on travels from China, and criticized the countries for doing so.
But India issued an advisory to suspend all non-essential travels to China on January 25, a few days before WHO recommended against travel bans on China and few days after WHO’s advice, the Indian government advised citizens to not travel to China at all, a step up from their earlier advice. The Indian government also banned all Air India flights to China until July, long before any such bans were in place in the world.
India’s strategy to deal with Coronavirus has been very different from that advised by WHO. The criminally incompetent organization advised “test test test” but the head of ICMR said “There will be no indiscriminate testing. Isolation, Isolation, isolation.”’
Moreover, to make sure that Isolation and social distancing is followed properly, Indian government announced 21 days lockdown. The Isolation strategy was based on a paper which argued that social distancing is more effective in dealing with the virus than Corona, and so far, it seems, argument was well-placed.
Given the nature of the virus, testing could not be right strategy. There are thousands of asymptomatic patients of Corona, and given the fact all of the 1.3 billion people could not tested, focus on testing would have been a stupid decision. Moreover, it has been revealed that many people who tested negative in one test, tested positive in tests after few days.
Therefore, there is no guarantee that the person once tested negative would not catch virus later, and this make focus on testing a zero return on huge investment decision. It is highly possible that WHO, which has been completely exposed as a Chinese puppet, told countries to focus on testing because China is the primary manufacturer of cheap anti-body tests.
And the biggest blunder by the WHO was advising against the use of masks. In this too, India got it right, and majority of the Indian people, from poor to rich, were using masks even when the virus has not spread in the country. Advising against masks is counter-intuitive given the fact that there are millions of asymptomatic patients who might not be identified as patients but infect the other person.
Moreover, data from countries around the world has proved that the countries which used masks at the early stage are better off. Countries like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore prevented the spread of Coronavirus by using masks from early on. In India too, many state governments like UP, Delhi, Maharashtra, have made it compulsory to wear masks before stepping out of home.
Instead of trusting criminally incompetent WHO, Indian government went ahead with expertise of ICMR, and thankfully so. Had India went ahead with WHO guidelines like-testing strategy, no masks advice, this would have proved huge blunder.
