The Rooster
"Okeydoke"
April 19, 2020
By Karen DeYoung, Lena H. Sun and Emily Rauhala
More than a dozen (click here) U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.
A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.
The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States....
...But the president, who often touts a personal relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and is reluctant to inflict damage on a trade deal with Beijing, appears to view the WHO as a more defenseless target.
In a statement provided to The Washington Post after online publication of this article, Caitlin B. Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed that in January, HHS had 17 staff members, including 16 from the CDC, at the WHO, “working on a variety of programs, including covid-19 and Ebola.” She emphasized that the staff members were not “decision-makers.”...
I might add, the idea U.S. researchers, physicians, and public health experts are not decision-makers of US policy is throughout the practice of those professionals. They have a "practice" and have the skills to investigate and report the truth, but, those facts are submitted to government authority to protect the people that the government provides protection.
We see a level of dismissal of the truth in the federal government of the USA in regard to the climate crisis. That dismissal of the truth has translated into politics for decades rather than policy. The idea Trump was playing politics with a deadly virus is more than unconscionable, it is an assault against the American people for his own politics.
The understanding that scientists once employed directly in China were removed is a very worrisome reality considering the attempt by Trump to turn COVID-19 into the common flu. Americans could have received the warning far earlier than even the WHO if those scientists were in place.
