Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
From the WaPo
More than a dozen 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.
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Did the WHO communicate the extent of the threat differently than the head of WHO did at the time Trump refers to? The head of the WHO was parroting China's version at that time that there was no evidence of human to human transmission and that the travel ban was not necessary, that it was alarmist and racist. The message was not one of urgency, but that the coronavirus was no more dangerous than the flu.
And the CDC, which requested it, was not allowed by China to go there and help to find out what exactly was happening.