OPINION:
Fresh off his election as World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made his first overseas trip in August 2017. His pick to begin a five-year “world” reign: China.
There, the man known as “Dr. Tedros” hobnobbed with communist ideologues while lavishing praise on everything China. (A note from America: China is in partnership with murderous Mexican drug cartels and also repeatedly violates the law by computer hacking and stealing.)
“New vision and strengthened partnership for WHO and China,” the organization gushed after the summit.
Ending the trip, Mr. Tedros said: “China’s health reforms show it’s possible to implement far-reaching, quality transformations in a short time. Its success in providing 95% of its population with access to health insurance is a model for other countries in how to make our world fairer, healthier and safer. We can all learn something from China.”
The Ethiopian’s infatuation with a brutal, expansionist Marxist regime helps explain the failure of the WHO a little over two years later. China let loose a deadly coronavirus strain that caused a disease known as COVID-19. To date, it has killed over 7 million worldwide. China has gotten away with mass deaths that an ethical country could have avoided.
Today, on the pandemic’s fifth anniversary, House Republicans have released the first comprehensive government report on the WHO’s corruption in the 2019 outbreak and China’s disdain for people’s lives.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic unearthed evidence of WHO-China collusion so startling that one wonders how the Geneva-based U.N. spinoff has stayed in business.
But if you are a captivated Mr. Tedros and view China as the world’s health care savior, you believe anything Beijing tells you.
Every logical-thinking person knows the virus leaked from a dysfunctional lab in Wuhan, the site of the first COVID-19 cases and home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The mad scientists there experimented in empowering the coronavirus under the innocent-sounding “gain of function” experiments.
The select subcommittee investigation found that the Chinese Communist Party manipulated the WHO as a cover for its deliberate deception; Mr. Tedros praised China for transparency when, in fact, it had embarked on a deadly cover-up; the WHO ignored an early virus warning from Taiwan; the WHO quoted China’s lies in January 2020 as the truth; China issued fake virus infection numbers; China silenced whistleblowers and gagged doctors, which brought no WHO condemnation; and the WHO issued a March 2021 report on virus origins that was total nonsense.
The subcommittee concluded: “The WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was an abject failure. … The World Health Organization failed to uphold its mission and caved to Chinese Communist Party pressure.”
Here is one count in the select subcommittee’s indictment: “While the WHO is supposed to support the entire world, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it appeared to protect its relationship with the CCP. The WHO was misinformed, denied access to China, and was used as cover for CCP’s reckless actions.”
The select subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican, also stated: “Throughout the pandemic, the WHO shied away from placing any blame on the CCP. Dr. Tedros even went so far as to praise the CCP’s ‘transparency’ during the crisis, when, in fact, the regime consistently lied to the world by underreporting China’s actual infection and death statistics. During the pandemic, the WHO repeatedly relied on false information from the CCP.”
Here is one unforgivable example. On Jan. 14, 2020, as the disease spread globally, the WHO repeated a China lie in a tweet: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.”
The House report listed other fake WHO pronouncements: “The WHO routinely praised the CCP’s efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 despite multiple reports that the CCP engaged in a massive disinformation campaign. According to a U.S. intelligence community report, the CCP severely underreported both its total number of cases and deaths caused by COVID-19.”
The WHO asserted publicly that China reported the virus outbreak in December 2019 when it did not.
“The CCP intentionally delayed notification of COVID-19 and concealed important health information,” the select subcommittee said.
Of course, the biggest misinformation was that the coronavirus mutated naturally.
This played into China’s wishes and, unfortunately, to the wishes of the American liberal news media, which protected the Wuhan lab as if it were a cherished only child.
The select subcommittee report headline: “The World Health Organization’s Report Regarding the Origins of COVID-19 Was Incomplete, Misleading, and Parroted Chinese Communist Party Propaganda.”
Watching the WHO debacle in early 2020 from Washington was then-President Donald Trump. Fed up, he took action. He suspended American taxpayer payments to the WHO that April and sent a blistering letter to Mr. Tedros himself.
“It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world,” Mr. Trump wrote.
A few months later, Mr. Trump withdrew from the WHO. In 2021, President Biden quickly re-embraced “Dr. Tedros.” A year after that, WHO member countries reelected Mr. Tedros to a new five-year term.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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