We Must Defend Our WHO
The WHO helps those who ask. America was just evil and dumb.
Even God doesn’t help you if you don’t ask. What makes America think the WHO is any different? The WHO helps those who help themselves. That’s it. They’re a support organization, not a paramilitary.
Short of taking out Donald Trump, there’s nothing the WHO could have done for America. That country was just too arrogant and too dumb. Unless the WHO had married Ivanka Trump, there’s no way that idiot would listen. This mad king at the helm of a wounded empire is now enraged, and he’s lashing out at a global organization that helps billions. America is lashing out at us.
Don’t let them. We must defend the WHO. The WHO has been there for us, and it has helped those who help themselves for decades. It is not a nanny. It is not a police force. It just helps those who ask.
Many nations depend partially or almost completely on the WHO. We have depended on them for COVID-19. If the WHO had failed, we would have seen massive failures across the ‘developing’ world. We have not.
Instead, we see regular success. Even poor countries that just listened are much healthier than the arrogant empires of the west. Note that the west doesn’t depend on the WHO as much as us. It’s their own systems that failed.
Let’s look at two leading nations and see what the WHO actually did, and how it worked. Let’s look at Mongolia and Trinidad & Tobago, both global leaders, unless you’re only counting white people.
Mongolia
Mongolia has had the best COVID-19 response in the world. Objectively this is true. With an urban population similar to Bergamo in Ulaanbaatar, with direct connections to China and Russia, they should have gotten hammered. They didn’t.
Instead, Mongolia has zero deaths and zero cases of local transmission. COVID-19 never transmitted on Mongolian soil. That’s amazing. Mongolia saved themselves, and they did it, in part, by working with the WHO.
January (AKA, four hundred years ago)
On January 22nd, WHO representative Sergey Diorditsa was sitting right next to Health Minister Davaajantsan Sarangerel, briefing the nation. Back when most of the world was picking their nose and licking doorknobs, Mongolia actually listened to the WHO and went on high alert.
On January 31st, the WHO helped Mongolia organize a meeting with multiple international organizations and embassies to share information and coordinate assistance.
Please note that this assistance was available to anyone. We just had to ask.
The US is whining that the WHO didn’t change its nappy. Meanwhile, Mongolia had its big-person pants on and was getting stuff done.
February
Throughout February, the WHO provided vital test kits and PPE to Mongolia — you know, all the stuff people were running around looking for in March?
Mongolia got supplies early simply because they asked. America could have had these test kits as well. Instead, they produced their own non-working tests, tried to blame Obama from three years ago, and got screwed. Again, not the WHO’s fault. As God said,
Ask and ye shall receive, you dumbasses.
March
By March the WHO sent this dude Hauke who’s just living there for weeks, along with a WHO Emergency Medical Team. Besides praising Mongolians for being pandemic geniuses (my words),
The EMT team recommended prevention and response measures for health facilities and health professionals if the novel coronavirus makes its way to Mongolia. Advice on disinfection of public places and health facilities and proper use of personal protective equipment were also provided by the WHO EMT team.
Again, the WHO provides more than tweets. The WHO is a rich organization which gets deeply involved in health responses, and not just in emergencies. In my country (Sri Lanka), the WHO has been with us every day from 1952 to helping set up our Epidemiology Unit in 1959.
They will literally park people in your country to help if you just ask. Mongolia asked, and they received.
The result? Mongolia has zero cases of local transmission. Each of their 140 cases was imported, many of them on purpose. And no, Mongolia did not get lucky, I’ve discussed why remoteness and population density wouldn’t have saved them. Mongolia worked hard, and they worked smart. They worked together with the WHO, and many others.
It’s not just Mongolia.
Trinidad & Tobago
Where is Trinidad & Tobago? In the West Indies, near South America. Why should you care? Because they’re global leaders, slept on by the Western media. We get wall to wall coverage of the stupidest nations on Earth, but none about the smart. T&T was smart.
The Caribbean is served by an arm of the WHO called the Pan-American Health Organization, or PAHO. The United States is technically a part of this, but they were of course too arrogant to listen.
On January 21st PAHO issued an epidemiological alert, on the 27th they directly urged readiness, and on the 30th January, the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency. So, you know, incoming.
At this point, no one in this region could say they weren’t warned. If little Trinidad & Tobago could figure this out, giant America could. T&T figured it out.
In mid-February, PAHO physically sent experts and reagents around the region to train people and getting testing facilities ready. The Caribbean Public Health Agency in T&T was first.
Training in the Caribbean began in Suriname, followed by Barbados and Haiti, and will continue later this week in Jamaica, Belize and Dominica. Next week, PAHO experts will travel to Bahamas and Guyana to complete this initiative in the sub-region.
In addition to this, on 10 February the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) in Trinidad and Tobago informed that its laboratory is ready to respond to the new coronavirus. (PAHO)
Again, the US could have done this. They could have asked the WHO. They could have asked PAHO. They just didn’t ask. So they can’t blame anyone else. You don’t see Trinidad & Tobago blaming people, they just got what they needed and did what they had to do.
As of today, through a lot of hard work of their own, Trinidad & Tobago are down to one active case. The first wave, at least, they have suppressed. They helped themselves, but at the right time, they got the right help from the WHO.
The WHO makes a difference. It makes a difference to us all.
Our WHO
Like I said, the WHO has been with my country since the beginning. Through the eradication of malaria, through dengue, through a lot. They’re here now. That’s why the attacks on the WHO are so evil. The WHO doesn’t just support the countries listed here, they support the world. They help us help ourselves.
This is why Richard Horton called that asshole Trump’s comments a crime against humanity. They are.
President Trump’s decision to harm an agency whose sole purpose is to protect the health and wellbeing of the world’s peoples is a crime against humanity. It is a knowing and inhumane attack against the global civilian population. (The Lancet)
He’s attacking us. Right now his TV show cast of incompetents is attacking the WHO at its world forum, bringing toxic politics into what should be meeting focused on this ongoing pandemic.
These are arrogant fools who didn’t listen when they had a chance, and are now trying to shoot the messenger. From being a partner in public health, the USA has become public enemy number one.
Does the WHO have problems? Yeah, it’s an international bureaucracy. Does a bear shit in the woods? On the whole, the WHO does incredible work, and I won’t get into splitting hairs with disingenuous idiots.
This is about improving the WHO as much as Gamersgate was about ‘ethics in game journalism’. The US is just a bunch of trolls. Don’t feed the trolls. Defend our WHO. We need it now more than ever.
