Five Republican congressmen with backgrounds as medical doctors wrote in the Washington Times that President Joe Biden‘s administration should not join and fund the World Health Organization unless it shows “independence from China.”
“Before putting U.S. taxpayers on the hook for the WHO’s budget, we should have laid out the standards that must be followed and demanded that reforms be made before agreeing to rejoin,” wrote Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and John Barrasso of Wyoming, as well as Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, John Joyce of Pennsylvania, and Brad Wenstrup of Ohio.
In his first days in office, Biden signed an executive order that directed the federal government to rejoin the WHO.
Former President Donald Trump had directed the federal government to leave the WHO after its decision to conceal the Chinese Communist Party’s role in letting the coronavirus spread without informing the world.
“In the early days of 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak was primarily contained within China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took multiple deceitful actions to hide the morbidity and the rate of transmission of the virus,” the Republican doctors wrote.
“Instead of sounding the alarm, the CCP silenced journalists and doctors, destroyed early samples of the novel coronavirus, blocked foreign investigations—including by U.S. health officials, and launched a sophisticated misinformation campaign to deflect responsibility as the virus spread across the globe,” they said.
The WHO also advised disastrous and unscientific lockdowns and mask mandates.
Even Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, expressed concern about the WHO’s trustworthiness.
“Re-engaging with the WHO also means holding it to the highest standards. … We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated,” he said, according to the Washington Times.
The Republican doctors said Biden should have sought guarantees of the organization’s “transparency, independence, and ability to address global pandemics.”
As the WHO’s largest funder, the United States could hold great influence over the organization’s operations.
Instead of retaining America’s financial leverage, Biden unilaterally granted the WHO an annual contribution of more than $400 million.
China pays 0.2% of the WHO’s total contributions, while the United States pays 15.15%.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributes 10.82% of the WHO’s budget and is the organization’s second-highest funder.
Although the United States props up the WHO, its officials “partnered with the CCP to cover up the origins of the virus,” said the op-ed.
“On January 14, 2020 after failing to independently verify China’s reporting, the official WHO Twitter account repeated China’s false talking points stating that ‘preliminary investigations conducted by the CCP authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transition [sic],'” it added.
Meanwhile in Washington, DC, a man tested positive for the coronavirus after traveling to Wuhan, China.
After repeating the CCP’s cover-up of human-to-human transmission, “the Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus—a candidate supported by China to run the WHO—traveled to China to meet with President Xi [Jinping] and lavished the Communist leader with praise for his transparency and handling of the outbreak.”
Tedros said China was “setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
He advised that travel bans “have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”
The Republican congressmen said they supported the idea, in principle, of a global health organization, but that more transparency and accountability were needed to safeguard against corrupt influences.
“The only way forward for an international public health organization to successfully function is if it can actually demonstrate independence from political influence and work with all partner nations to uncover and share the information experts need,” Marshall, Barrasso, Harris, Joyce, and Wenstrup wrote. “Humankind needs a functioning science-driven organization—not a politically driven one.”
