GHANSHYAM J PATEL | The coronavirus pandemic has engulfed the whole world and every country is facing serious challenges in terms of economic and health security of millions of people. The Novel Coronavirus is indeed a Black Swan. Nassim Taleb in his famous book “The Black Swan” on the financial crisis of 2008, defines “a black swan as an outlier with massive impact, which seems highly improbable until it occurs, but more predictable after its rise.” The cascading effect of Covid-19 has already brought unprecedented economic recession and its impact will be extremely deleterious and indelible. According to Asian development Bank, “Global economy could witness losses worth up to $ 8.8 trillion due to Covid-19.” The virus has already created havoc around the world as unemployment rates are soaring, health infrastructure is crippling, stock markets are crashing and it’s nowhere stopping. An unsolved conundrum is whom to blame for this turmoil. After the close perusal of events and evidences, it can be confidently said that Chinese government and World health Organisation (“WHO”) are truly responsible for this mayhem.
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Brazen blunders by China
It is a satire of modern era that the world’s most powerful and draconian totalitarian state, China influences or presides over numerous agencies of United Nation (“UN”), the torchbearer of the international liberal order. China has been striving to be a public health superpower since last few years and fortuitously found a submissive international partner i.e. WHO.
According to many sources, cases of Covid-19 began to spread in November 2019. Initially the Chinese government denied and tried to cover-up the spread of Covid-19. Moreover, the communist party of China silenced the “while-blowers” and understated the threat. The infamous case of doctor Li Wenliang who told the world about novel coronavirus was also silenced by Chinese authorities. Several official records of the government allude that patient zero of Covid-19 can be traced back to November 17. In late January, Chinese government awoke to tackle the virus, consequently providing leeway of two months of unabated spread of novel coronavirus. The obfuscating tactics of China misled the world. China overtly tried to spread a global disinformation campaign and endeavoured to censor myriad official accounts. It also attempted to pinpoint the origin of the novel coronavirus as Europe or the United States hereinafter (“US”).
The top Chinese officials waited for more than a week to take preventive measures after confidentially accepting that the country is likely to face a pernicious coronavirus outbreak. Even when there are clear signs that this virus was showing human to human transmission, the China is not ready to accept the same. On January 21, Chinese authorities conceded that there is human to human transmission and around three days after this acceptance, the lockdown was imposed in Wuhan. During this short period of three days, millions of people already left Wuhan and further spreading the disease around the world.
Crucial role of WHO in Public Health and dereliction of duties
One of the most important agencies of UN is WHO which plays significant role in public health by facilitating leadership and providing “ethical as well as evidence-based policy options.” WHO is also responsible for “monitoring the health situation and assessing health trends.” It is very unfortunate that WHO failed to perform above pivotal roles. Despite numerous cases of Covid-19 already showing transmission, WHO repudiated to acknowledge “human to human transmission” of the virus. WHO even reprimanded many countries including the US, France and India for issuing travel advisories and restricting flights from Wuhan, epicenter of Covid-19. On Jan 11, WHO stated that “it does not recommend any specific health measures for travelers to and from Wuhan, China. It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit while requiring considerable resources.”
On 31 December 2019, Taiwan tried to alert WHO about “atypical pneumonia cases” spreading in China and even showing “human to human transmission” but WHO didn’t give heed to such warnings. On 14th January, WHO avowed that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.”
WHO went to become China’s coronavirus accomplice
WHO was over enthusiastic to broadcast China’s message. “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. The country had gained invaluable time for the response in an all-of-government and all-of society approach that has averted or delayed hundreds of thousands of cases, protecting the global community and creating a stronger first line of defense against international spread. Beijing’s strategy demonstrated that containment can be adapted and successfully operationalized in a wide range of settings”, an excerpt from WHO report of February clearly substantiate the above point. Another failure of WHO during this pandemic is not able to determine the patient zero of Covid-19. WHO closed its eyes to many wrongdoings of China such as isolation of all medical staff who knew about Covid-19. Moreover, WHO squarely relied on the highly dubious information provided by Chinese government. It is also not clear whether WHO experts who visited China adequately investigated or understood the ground situation. Another point is regarding funding, WHO receives financial aid from both Communist party and Chinese government. China’s funding to WHO have grown by 52% since 2014. China’s influence is increasing not only at WHO, but also in the health policies of several countries under the Belt and Road initiative (“BRI”). The aggressive investment by China in health infrastructure of African countries under the aegis of BRI is also for its own benefits.
China colluded with WHO’s top leadership
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization and ex- health minister of Ethiopia is alleged to be the prime complicit in China’s delinquencies. He favored China in every possible way. On 28th January, he visited China met President Xi Jinping in Beijing. After the meeting, he commended China for “setting a new standard for outbreak control” and even praised “the country’s top leadership for its openness to sharing information with the WHO and other countries.” In the first week of February, he also said “widespread travel bans not needed to beat the virus.” On February 20 at the Munich Security Conference, Tedros doubled down on his praise for China stating that “China has bought the world time.” From his statements it is clear that he presented China’s response in a very positive light. He blatantly ignored China’s mistakes and lies. When he should have been focusing on global counter-pandemic efforts, Tedros instead was politicizing the crisis and helping China to propagate misinformation.
Tedros was elected to his position with the WHO in 2017, despite the fact that he was not trained as a medical doctor and had no global health management experience. He was elected as director general of WHO with the help of China. This can be the possible reason behind his favoring China.
Concluding comments and way forward
If this kind of collusion and negligence perpetrates in future, the vision for halcyon days is just a distinct hope. The China’s collusion with WHO should now warn democratic countries across the world. The China’s slow response and WHO’s blatant disregard towards mounting threat of Covid-19 resulted in the ubiquitous spread of the disease. WHO is facing ample criticism for abetting, assisting and spreading the Chinese propaganda. China somehow managed to contain the outbreak of Covid-19 but not before it had disseminated countless cases around the world. Today, despite the initial denials, falsehoods and cover ups which triggered the outbreak, China is determined to leverage its successful containment strategies into a “stronger position on international health bodies”.
The gravamen of the present issue is that China’s response is farrago of distortions and outright lies. Moreover, WHO ignored these distortions and lies and focused only on positive aspects of China’s response. It is well known truth among several heath experts and experienced diplomats that WHO is “not fit for mission and riddled with politics and bureaucracy.” Its leadership values and effectiveness are dampening gradually with the passage of time. Moreover, its sluggish response to the current crisis and previous failures has already raised many questions about its functioning. Furthermore, China has been continuously filling the vacuum created by western countries, especially the US since last one decade.
In my opinion the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party are fully responsible for the global pandemic and the China’s actions were determined to cause death and destruction outside their country.
Ghanshyam J Patel is an undergraduate student of Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar. He can be reached at ghanshyam22801@gmail.com
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