Trump right to attack WHO on coronavirus – UN agency deserves even harsher criticism

President Trump was right this week to sharply criticize the inexcusable conduct of the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic and to threaten to cut U.S. funding for that United Nations organization.

The U.S. contributed over $400 million to the WHO last year – far more than any other nation. China contributed $44 million.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attacked Trump on Wednesday. “If you don’t want many more body bags, you refrain from politicizing it,” Tedros told reporters.

Tedros was reacting to Trump’s sharp comments Tuesday, when Trump tweeted that the WHO was “China-centric” and “really blew it.”

“And literally, they called every shot wrong,” the president told Sean Hannity on his Fox News program “Hannity” Tuesday night, explaining why the U.S. might stop contributing to the U.N. organization.

As harsh as the president’s criticisms were, they did not go far enough.

The WHO bears responsibility for helping China spread the coronavirus far beyond China’s borders. What should have been merely a local outbreak that began in China became a worldwide pandemic as a result of the actions of Beijing and the WHO.

As of Wednesday night there were nearly 90,000 confirmed deaths caused by the coronavirus around the world, including almost 15,000 in the U.S. The actual death toll is surely higher, because people are not usually tested for the virus after death and because China is deliberately underreporting its own death toll.

The WHO’s primary sin is its early support of China’s false claim that the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, could not be transmitted person-to-person.

WHO issued a now-infamous tweet Jan. 14 repeating China’s position. There was, the U.N. organization declared, “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

Doctors in Wuhan, China knew of human-to-human transmissions by the second week of December, which means Communist Party leaders in Beijing had to know soon afterward.

Chinese leaders not only tried to keep this critical information secret – a highly irresponsible action – but went further and tried to deceive the world into thinking the coronavirus was not contagious in this manner.

Moreover, the WHO also helped Beijing spread the disease in other ways. The U.N. organization urged countries to keep their borders open to travelers who ultimately carried the disease beyond...

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