It’s rare, but Trump is spot on
IF a stopped clock can be right twice a day, an idiot can be correct as well with equally surprising frequency.
US president Donald Trump has now suspended all payments to the World Health Organisation (WHO) accusing them of being too ‘Chinacentric’ – another way of saying they’re licking the behind of that notorious Communist dictator Xi Jinping.
On this one the Donald might not be too far off the mark.
We’ve all heard about the Chinese doctor Li Wenliang who was told by police to stop ‘making false comments’ and ‘spreading rumours’ when he tried before Christmas to alert colleagues and the authorities to the new virus outbreak.
Despite this, and the unusual public expression of anger by millions of Chinese on social media after Dr Li died from the disease himself, the WHO has been nothing but complimentary of the Chinese dictatorship concerning its handling of Covid-19.
The organisation’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus even praised Xi Jinping’s ‘very rare leadership’ and the country’s ‘transparency’ on the outbreak.
Ghebreyesus is a former Ethiopian foreign minister and China has been all over Ethiopia like a rash for years, investing billions in natural resources extraction.
Old friends are best.
Another reason why President Trump is entitled to be ticked off is explained by the origins of the money that keeps WHO in business. The largest single donor is the US, which has handed WHO $893m in the past two years. That’s $2.70 per capita.
China, on the other hand, divvied up just $86m – a derisory 6 cents per capita for its 1.4 billion population.
We in Ireland paid WHO $6.4m – that’s $1.30 per person.
Incidentally, the British are the biggest contributors per capita, chipping in $438m, or $6.30 per head of population.
As for transparency, hands up those who are naive enough to have believed the original Chinese claim that only 82,000 people had been infected there and that only 3,342 people had died – out of a global death toll of over 140,000.
Even the Chinese saw for themselves how ridiculous that was and have upped the death toll this week by 50 per cent.
Also, they’re well capable of lying about the origin of the virus. The US is investigating whether the virus came from a Wuhan laboratory and not from a local wet market. Don’t expect Xi Jinping to make a clean breast of that one either.