WHO needs a doctor

My favourite blogger, the academic Wolfgang Munchau*, has picked up on a "well researched series" in Le Monde which reviews the role of the World Health Organisation in the pandemic. "It's not a glorious picture" he says, concluding that the WHO was slow to react and "has been under China's influence since the beginning of the pandemic"**.

In summary, the WHO:

• did not question information provided by China
• in mid-January the WHO went with the Chinese line that the virus was "not transmissable between humans in the community, only within families"
• criticised airlines who cancelled flights to China at the end of January
• did not pursue it's own investigations, even when two Chinese whistleblowers who revealed the real state of Wuhan's hospitals disappeared
• only sent a mission to China in late February and then initially did not intend to go to the Hubei province hotspots, swallowing the Chinese line that hospital staff had other things to do than receive an international mission
• lost precious weeks before announcing a pandemic on 11 March

The WHO boss, Tendros Adhanom, has close relations with China and hailed the country for its efficiency and rapid response. He accused Taiwan - who along with Chinese whistleblowers first raised the alarm - of racism against him without proof, serving the Chinese foreign policy agenda by swallowing stories which turned out to be from Chinese internet trolls masquerading as Taiwanese citizens.

Or, in my words, the WHO has been in China's pocket.

Those who criticise the UK government - and there are clearly things to criticise - might pause and wonder just how much the UK government's advice was influenced by the WHO in January and February. And on the snippet I only picked up on recently that the well respected John Hopkins University's Global Health Security Index rated the UK second in the world in its assessment of 195 countries' preparedness for pandemics published in 2019. The much praised Germany and New Zealand scored in the middle of three categories ("more prepared") compared with the UK (in "most prepared"). The UK ranked first in the world in its ability to respond. Thinking about the Nightingales programme and the way testing capacity has ramped up by an order of magnitude in a month one can understand that assessment. However, it might have created a degree of complacency in January, when combined with the WHO briefings.

I would still like to know what Matt Hancock was asking the NHS, particularly about PPE stocks and the supply chain, at that time. But it will all come out in the eventual inevitable public inquiry, and for now it's more important to let people get on with their jobs. 

But it seems like the WHO could use a doctor themselves. As usual the best qualified one would have a time machine so they could go back and make a better fist of things.

* Well, perhaps after Opher Goodwin, the writer and chronicler whose output includes fascinating "I was there" blogs about the 60s and early 70s, including first hand accounts of Roy Harper's gigs and recording sessions. His latest musings were about the relationship between Harper and Keith Emerson, including the time the Nice jammed with Harper on "Hell's Angels", the last track on his 1969 album "Flat, Baroque and Berserk". Harper has said that the Nice turned him on to rock and he pointed Emerson in the direction of Sibelius's Karelia Suite, which became a Nice classic for group and orchestra, or just group.

** WHO and China - a dangerous liaison in this pandemic, Wolfgang Munchau, Euronitelligence Public Briefing, 30 April
http://www.eurointelligence.com/public/briefings/2020-04-30.html?cHash=f9391359d69b826677f1a891f44715df

***  The John Hopkins Global Health Security Index home page is at https://www.ghsindex.org/
where you can see their map of the world and drill down into each country. The UK summary is at https://www.ghsindex.org/country/united-kingdom/. You could spend hours looking at it, trust me.