‘We will have many body bags in front of us if we don’t behave…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The World Health Organization claimed it has never favored China, pushing back on criticism from President Donald Trump, who said the organization was “very China centric” and threatened to slash its U.S. funding.
Bruce Aylward, who serves as senior adviser to the organization’s director-general, told reporters that the WHO focused on China during the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in order to learn more about the virus.
This focus on China “was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” Aylward told Reuters.
China, however, has not worked with the WHO, the U.S., or any other country. In fact, a U.S. intelligence report found that China’s communist regime has been regularly lying about its coronavirus death numbers and covering up the true extent of the virus’s spread.
That hasn’t stopped the WHO from repeating China’s reported numbers as fact, which is why Trump has called out the organization for aiding China’s misinformation campaign.
“The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday
“Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on,” he added. “Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”
WHO Director Tedros Ghebreyesus hit back at Trump and accused the president of putting more lives at risk by questioning the organization’s conclusions.
“If you don’t want many more body bags you refrain from politicizing it—please quarantine politicizing COVID,” Ghebreyesus told reporters, before urging the U.S. to “come together” with China to “fight this dangerous enemy.”
“They should come together to fight it and the rest of G-20 should come together to fight it, and the rest of the world should come together and fight it,” Ghebreyesus continued. “We will have many body bags in front of us if we don’t behave.”