President takes aim at WHO, China
After spending weeks accusing the World Health Organization of helping the Chinese government cover up the early days of the coronavirus epidemic in China, President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States would terminate its relationship with the agency.
“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said in a speech in the Rose Garden. “Countless lives have been taken, and profound economic hardship has been inflicted all around the globe.”
In his 10-minute address, Trump took no responsibility for the deaths of 100,000 Americans from the virus, instead saying China had “instigated a global pandemic.”
There is no evidence that the WHO or the government in Beijing hid the extent of the epidemic in China, and public health experts generally view Trump’s charges as a way to deflect attention from his administration’s own bungled attempts to respond to the virus’s spread in the U.S.
A spokeswoman for the WHO in Geneva, where word of Trump’s announcement first landed at 9 p.m., said the agency would not have a response until Saturday.
It is not clear whether the president can simply withdraw the U.S. from the World Health
Organization without Congressional approval.
“The president can’t unilaterally withdraw us,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law at The Georgetown University Law Center.
“It’s a nonstarter,” he added. “This is literally a whim of one man, without any consultation with Congress, in the middle of the greatest health emergency of our lifetime.”
The WHO was founded in 1948 as part of the postwar creation of the United Nations and is the world’s premier global health organization. Trump supported and generously funded the organization as it fought an Ebola outbreak in Africa for three years but abruptly turned on the WHO a few weeks ago, when he began accusing the organization of doing too little to warn the world of the spread of the coronavirus.
The U.S. has been by far the WHO’s largest donor since its inception. The budget for the WHO is about $6 billion, which comes from member countries around the world. In 2019, the last year for which figures were available, the U.S. contributed about $553 million.
Earlier Friday, U.S. Commerce Department statistics showed a record-shattering 13.6% drop in spending in April, a day after a federal jobs report showed another 2 million-plus Americans went out of work last week. The depth of the spending drop is particularly damaging because consumer spending is the primary driver of the economy.
The bad economic news was echoed in Europe, where an extensive social welfare net was showing signs of fraying, as protests erupted for a second day in Spain against layoffs by French carmaker Renault and Italy’s chief central banker warned that “uncertainty is rife.”
Some U.S. states were going ahead with steps to reopen businesses and leisure activities needed to spur spending and restore jobs, but there were also reminders of the risks of moving too quickly.
In Missouri, officials said they were trying to notify “mass numbers of unknown people” after someone who attended crowded pool parties Memorial Day weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks tested positive for COVID-19. Video of the parties circulated widely online, with many people criticizing revelers for flouting social distancing guidelines.
Arkansas, during the past week, has seen a steady rise of active coronavirus cases, after moves by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to reopen businesses shuttered during the pandemic.
Health officials on Thursday announced the number of active cases, excluding people who have recovered or died, hit a new high of 1,830 in the state, which has had a total of 6,538 cases. Arkansas also hit a record for a one-day increase in infections in the community, meaning ones that don’t include the incarcerated.
“We’re not going to go back, but we want people to follow those guidelines, make sure they do everything they can to avoid the spread and we can get through this,” Hutchinson said.
However, a rural Northern California county decided temporarily to rescind its order allowing the reopening of restaurants, shopping and other services after its first coronavirus cases developed.
Lassen County had no reported coronavirus cases until May 22, when state data showed it was one of only two California counties with zero cases. But as of Wednesday, the county of 30,000 people had reported five cases. Lassen County had started reopening businesses under state rules May 11.
New York City, meanwhile, was on track to begin reopening June 8 as the state gradually loosens restrictions, Gov. Andrew
Cuomo said Friday.
The nation’s worst pandemic hot spot was meeting goals set for hospital rates and testing, will “stockpile” personal protective equipment like masks and will focus on infection rates in outbreak areas by ZIP code, he said. He made the remarks as a large swath of upstate New York got the go-ahead Friday to reopen hair salons, retail shops and offices under strict guidelines. New York City remains the only region of the state that hasn’t started reopening.
A federal public health study released Friday shed more light on the contagion’s beginnings in the United States. The most comprehensive federal study to date concluded that the spark that started the U.S. coronavirus epidemic arrived during a three-week window from mid-January to early February, before the nation halted travel from China.
Some people have claimed Americans were getting sick from the coronavirus as early as November and that infections were spreading in the U.S. before any case was identified, said Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Redfield said the study “puts data into the discussion.”
The U.S. Commerce Department figures showed that consumers are unable or reluctant to spend, even as incomes soared 10.5% in April, reflecting billions of dollars in government payments in the form of unemployment aid and stimulus checks.
However, wages and salaries — normally the key component of overall income — sank by an annualized $740 billion in April. By contrast, income in the form of government support jumped by an annualized $3 trillion. That form of income likely will fade in coming months as government aid programs expire.
Until Friday’s spending report for April, a revised 6.9% decline in March had been the record for the steepest one-month fall in records dating to 1959.
Debate in Congress over whether to extend the $600 a week in federally provided benefits to the unemployed looked sure to intensify, with the number of people receiving the aid now topping 30 million — one in five workers. The money, included in a government relief package enacted in March, is set to expire July 31.
The latest job-loss figures from the Labor Department brought to 41 million the running total of Americans who have filed for unemployment since mid-March.