Trump points the finger of blame at another Black man for COVID-19
20th April 2020 · 0 Comments
By Frederick H. Lowe
BlackmansStreet.Today
President Trump has found a Black man other than former President Barack Obama to point the finger at for his and his administration’s failings.
Trump is now attacking Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian-born head of the World Health Organization, one of the go-to organizations dispensing important data concerning the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. is a major WHO funder, and on last Tuesday Trump cut the Geneva, Switzerland-based organization’s funding, charging that the WHO “really blew it,” being persuaded by China to downplay the coronavirus outbreak.
“They could have called it much earlier,” Trump said at a coronavirus task force briefing last Tuesday evening. “When they call every shot wrong, that’s no good.” He charged that the WHO was very “China-centric. “Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on.
“Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?” Trump posted in an April 7 tweet. Nearly 40,000 people have flown from China to the United States since the president imposed travel restrictions between the two countries.
And others have piled on. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump loyalist, said on Fox News he will push to cut WHO’s U.S. funding unless there is a change in leadership. The U.S. provided $900 million in funding to the WHO in 2018 and 2019. Trump wants to cut it to $57.9 million and Graham wants to cut the funding to zero. So far, Trump has followed Graham’s lead.
During a virtual news briefing, Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said it wasn’t the appropriate time to cut funding during the ongoing pandemic.
Dr. Ghebreyesus warned Trump not to politicize the pandemic.
“If you want to be exploited and if you want to have many more body bags, then you do it. If you don’t want any more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ghebreysus released a timeline on WHO letterhead. The timeline begins on December 31, 2019, when China reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and the last date is March 18.
The most important date is January 30, when the WHO declared the coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern.” The director general accepted the recommendation and declared a novel coronavirus outbreak.”
On the other hand, President Trump confidently predicted the coronavirus did not present a serious threat to the U.S., assuring Americans: “It’s going to have very good ending.”
Prior to January 30, the WHO issued dire warnings.
On January 1, 2020, the WHO had set up the Incident Management Support Team across three levels of the organization: headquarters, regional headquarters, and country-level putting the organization on emergency status for dealing with the viral outbreak.
From February 16 to 24, a WHO-China joint mission, which included participation from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Republic of Korea, Russia and Singapore, spent time in Beijing.
The mission also traveled to Wuhan where they talked to health workers and scientists. The joint mission released a report: www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronavirus/who-china-joint-mission-covid-19-final-report.pdf.
On January 5, 2020, WHO published in the first issue of Disease Outbreak News concerns about the new virus. This is a flagship publication that was given to the scientific and public health community as well as to the global media.
There also is another racial component here.
Dr. Ghebreyesus charged that Taiwan, which is not a WHO member, engaged in a racist smear campaign against him because he is Black. The country’s foreign minister denied the accusation.
He does, however, have strong support from Africa’s heads of state. Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, reaffirmed Africa’s support of WHO.
Ethiopian President Sahle – Work Zewde, said “Our global priority is to save lives. WHO under Dr. Tedros’ effective leadership, is delivering on its mandate at a time we need them most.”
Dr. Ghebreyesus also has the support of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the White House’s point man on COVID-19.
Trump, however, continues the game of shifting the blame on Black men. He started blaming Obama for every Oval Office failing, and he hasn’t stopped.
This article originally published in the April 20, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
