Maria Van Kerkhove, an American infectious disease epidemiologist, has dropped another bomb on the criminally corrupt complicancy of WHO in protecting China and outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic.
Maria, who is based in health emergency program of WHO, has said that the organization knew right from start that human-to-human transmission of the virus was possible.
“Right from the start, from the first notification we received on the 31st of December, given that this was a cluster of pneumonia — I’m a MERS specialist, so my background is in coronaviruses and influenza — so immediately thought, given that this is a respiratory pathogen, that of course there may be human-to-human transmission,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said in a press briefing.
Now, here comes the interesting part. A senior WHO scientist claiming that she knew about human-to-human transmission is in itself a huge admission. If a senior scientist knew about this, it is a very imperative for the other scientists to know about it as well.
However, on January 14, after the countries across the world became suspicious about the outbreak of the virus and was mulling over travel restrictions, WHO infamously tweeted that human-to-human transmission is not possible, with the only intention to save China.
On January 14, almost two weeks after Maria had warned that human-to-human transmission was very much possible, WHO tweeted, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020
Not just the Dr Maria, but the health officials from many other countries like Taiwan, which have successfully contained the spread of the virus, also warned the WHO and shared important information and data, and asked the organization to share it with other countries to contain the outbreak.
But due to Chinese pressure, the WHO refused to entertain Taiwan as since 2016, Taiwan hasn’t been allowed to participate at the annual World Health Assembly and WHO technical and experts’ meetings — which is a sign of the sway that China has over the WHO.
WHO’s role has been highly suspicious throughout the Coronavirus outbreak and the organization came out as criminally corrupt and incompetent. With its compliancy in the Coronavirus outbreak, the organization has probably taken more lives than it saved in its entire existence.
When India, the USA and some countries put travel bans on China, the WHO criticised the ban and advised against travel restrictions. The European Union relied on the WHO’s wisdom and didn’t restrict travel to and from China and soon became the epicentre of the Wuhan virus. It was for Europe hereafter that the entire world got infected with the virus.
First it denied human-to-human transmission and later the organization came up with the argument that masks are not required for those not infected, while the evidence suggested to the contrary. “There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland.
WHO seems illogical and counter-intuitive. Given the fact there are many asymptomatic patients carrying the virus, it is far wiser to wear a mask than to not wear it. Data from countries like Czech Republic, Slovakia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong support the claim that masks help in prevention. The countries which made masks mandatory (Czech Republic, Slovakia), and the countries which distributed masks to the public so that no one comes out without a mask, have very, very low rate of infections.
This is the strongest statistical association I've seen w/ respect to the virus. Wear a mask, mandate others to wear masks, & remember that @WHO is criminally incompetent. To repeat:@WHO is criminally incompetent.
PS-Don't get into elevators, buses, etc. unless your mask in N95 https://t.co/ZCkl3hql9K
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) March 31, 2020
WHO is so criminally corrupt that it is ready to risk the lives of the people to maintain its public image. The lethargic bureaucracy at WHO, which spends more money on travel than the distribution of equipment to needy, has failed humanity, which it vowed to protect. In order to serve Chinese interests, the organization risked lives of billions of people, and thousands have already died with lakhs infected. The organization should be banned right at the moment, as so far, it has done more harm than good in the fight against Coronavirus.