United States stops paying contributions – Trump turns off WHO money – News story



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  • Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, suspended the payment of contributions to the World Health Organization (WHO).
  • Trump blamed the organization on Tuesday night for the large number of deaths. WHO’s mismanagement and reliance on information from China has dramatically worsened the epidemic and spread it worldwide.
  • In January, Trump praised China for the way the country was dealing with the outbreak of the pandemic.

Over the next 60 to 90 days, your government will review the role that WHO has played in “mismanagement and concealment of the spread of the coronavirus.” This is how the payments were on hold.

For nearly ten minutes, Trump delivered his devastating criticism to the WHO in the White House rose garden. “One of the WHO’s most dangerous and costly decisions was the disastrous decision to denounce travel restrictions from China and other countries,” he said. Fortunately, I was not convinced and stopped traveling from China, saving countless lives. Thousands upon thousands of people would have died.

In late January, the United States banned foreign travelers from entering the country. Other countries have followed the WHO’s recommendations against it and “accelerated the pandemic worldwide,” Trump said. “The decision of other major countries to keep travel open was one of the great tragedies and missed opportunities in the early days.”

Imminent social and economic consequences.

The WHO had not officially recommended trade and travel restrictions in the crisis, referring, inter alia, to the imminent interruption in the need for aid transport and due to the negative social and economic effects in the affected countries.

Bad time for criticism

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UN Secretary General António Guterres in a reflective mine.
Legend:Keystone

Secretary General António Guterres condemned Trump’s decision. “It was not the time to cut resources for the efforts of the WHO or any other humanitarian organization to combat the virus,” he said. The virus and “its devastating consequences” must stop together. The UN chief had explicitly defended the work of the WHO last week, but also offered the possibility of a subsequent investigation.

The WHO, based in Geneva, is the principal health agency of the United Nations. According to their own declarations, less than a quarter of their budget consists of the obligatory contributions of the member states. The United States is the highest payer in this group.

In this context, according to Trump, travel restrictions are a sensible tactical strategy. The travel bans functioned as quarantines. “Pandemics depend on transmission from person to person. Border controls are essential for virus control. “

More criticism and a look back

But that is not all: the WHO did not critically and immediately review the information provided by the Chinese government, Trump continued to criticize. Instead, they took China’s promise to the letter and even praised the country for its “supposed transparency.”

The late declaration of a health emergency had “cost valuable time.” With faster and more determined intervention by the WHO, the epidemic could have been limited to its place of origin with just a few deaths, Trump said. “That would have saved thousands of lives and avoided economic damage around the world.”

Distraction maneuvers

At his press conference, Trump retrieved his own statements from the recent past. He himself praised China’s handling of the outbreak in a tweet on January 24.

Sad record

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According to Johns Hopkins University, there were about 600,000 known infections in the US. USA Tuesday night (local time). About 25,000 people have died as a result of the infection in the United States.

In 24 hours, more people in the United States have died from the virus than ever before. University experts recorded 2,228 deaths in the United States. The previous maximum was reached last Friday with 2108 deaths.

The WHO is a welcome scapegoat for Trump. In the Corona crisis, he himself suffered considerable pressure. The Republican had long publicly downplayed the risk of the corona virus. Now he is accused of reacting too hesitantly to the outbreak, making the United States unprepared for the epidemic.

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