WHO IS TO BE BLAMED

BY NOW there is little doubt that the World Health Organization (WHO) blatantly soft-pedalled China’s dubious role in covering up the debilitating spread of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The only question that remains to be answered is: why?

As WHO’s image lay in tatters, its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at an April-6 virtual press conference to mark 100 days of the pandemic, did the unthinkable to wriggle out of the mess. Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian, charged that he has been the target of racial attacks for three months because he is black. He even claimed to have received death threats. All this was a prelude to him refuting the much serious charge made by US President Donald Trump that WHO has become “China centric”. Tokyo, too, has charged WHO with toeing the China line. Japan’s deputy prime minister Taro Aso went as far as to say that WHO should be renamed China Health Organization!

There are ample studies that indicate a definite cover-up by China. WHO not only kept itself blind to it but, in fact, showered praises on Beijing. “China is doing more than it is expected to do”, “I am impressed with the knowledge of China’s leadership on the subject”, “China is protecting rest of the world,” and “China deserves our gratitude”—these were the expressions Ghebreyesus used at his first media briefing after he returned from China. He never said a word about the cover-up.

WHO, which always praises health workers as “heroes”, never mentioned Chinese whistle-blower Li Weliang. The doctor had warned of an unknown pneumonia-type disease much before China declared it to the world. Weliang was jailed for this. He was later released but developed COVID-19 symptoms and died.

On January 23, WHO called a meeting to declare a global health emergency. But it did not declare it and waited for a week for Ghebreyesus to return from China. By this time, COVID-19 cases increased 10 times and the virus entered 18 countries. It even denied human-to-human transmission of the virus till mid-January. Studies now say such a spread started in December itself. Till as late as February, WHO kept rebuking nations for imposing travel and trade restrictions on China. When countries began evacuating their citizens from Wuhan, the COVID-19 epicentre, WHO said it did not favour this step. By now, the UN body was completely cornered as countries refused to listen to it. A desperate WHO said it would invoke International Health Regulations and demand explanation from the countries for ignoring it.

The road to declaring COVID-19 a pandemic was equally bumpy. WHO officials vehemently denied this till mid-February despite warnings from global health experts. But WHO kept deflecting the debate between “containment” and “mitigation”. Containment means a phase when the virus can be contained or chain of

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION WAITED FOR A WEEK TO DECLARE A GLOBAL HEALTH EMERGENCY. BY THIS TIME, COVID-19 CASES INCREASED 10 TIMES AND THE VIRUS ENTERED 18 COUNTRIES

transmission controlled. Mitigation is the stage when it is accepted that the virus can no longer be controlled and efforts should be made to mitigate its impact.

WHO kept saying it was pointless to declare COVID-19 a pandemic since containment was possible. However, when it had to finally make that declaration, the UN body started advising nations not to go into the binary of containment and mitigation! It is widely speculated that WHO delayed the pandemic declaration under pressure from China.

Ghebreyesus obliquely criticised India for not taking adequate “social measures” before announcing a lockdown. All this while, WHO’s South Asia officials were praising New Delhi’s response to the virus. Soon, the WHO chief, too, changed track and appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for announcing the `1.74 lakh-crore bailout package for the poor. Incidentally, the package had been already announced

Despite ample studies indicating a cover-up by China, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus showered praises on Beijing

when Ghebreyesus berated India.

WHO has also been fledgling on the issue of masks. For long, it said healthy persons did not need to wear masks. Hours before the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention advised that everyone should wear masks, WHO said it would support countries’ decision. But the next day, WHO issued a fresh guidelines reverting to its previous position.

“We may commit mistakes. We are human beings, after all, and not angels,” Ghebreyesus said on April 8 in his first admission of serious oversights in his response to the pandemic. “We will do an after-action review once the pandemic ends to learn lessons for future.”

The review may eventually help WHO improve but its decisions have cost the world heavily. By April 12, the pandemic had spread to more than 200 countries, infecting 1.73 million people and leaving 108,000 dead.

REGARDLESS OF the course the COVID-19 crisis takes, future commentators will link our response to it with the global climate emergency. If we fail to respond adequately to the pandemic, they will point at our planet-wide failures on climate change as a forerunner and an indicator of our inability to act together in dealing with a global crisis. If we manage to respond adequately, they will link the pandemic to the long-desired good of carbon mitigation, because dealing with COVID-19 will involve social distancing and result in a huge loss of economic activity, thereby reducing emissions.

The links, however, are tenuous, at least at the global level. Though China’s response to the crisis led to an 18 per cent reduction in carbon emissions between February and mid-March, the evidence on the strength of the link between COVID-19 and global emission reduction is still mixed. For one, the World Meteorological Organization reports that at several key observation sites, emissions levels for February 2020 were higher than they were in February 2019, perhaps because industries across the world had not yet stopped production. Secondly, the economic impact is currently being projected in terms of general indicators such as GDP, stock prices and job losses. The differentiated impacts between sectors (such as oil and renewables) will take more time to become clear. As expected, oil demand and prices have taken a beating. But the global oil market

THE US IS RELAXING ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS ON FOSSIL FUEL PRODUCERS AND REGULATIONS REQUIRING THE AUTO INDUSTRY TO PRODUCE LESS POLLUTING VEHICLES

which has agreed to a US $2 trillion recovery package on March 27, is relaxing environmental regulations on fossil fuel producers and regulations requiring the auto industry to produce less polluting vehicles. The aviation industry is likely to get assistance with no strings attached. The administration looks likely to help oil companies, despite the current fall in prices being caused more by a price war than by the pandemic. On the flip side, tax credits to the wind and solar industries have not been extended.

In Europe, countries reliant on coal energy, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic, have been pushing to relax the targets outlined late last year in the EU’s

PM2.5 levels in Delhi decreased by 71 per cent between March 22 and March 27 during a lockdown to contain COVID-19

Green Deal, which aims a carbon-neutral Europe by 2050. The European renewables industry is more organised, exerting pressure to fold a green stimulus into the EU’s pandemic recovery package. The signs are more promising here—the European Council has indicated that it plans to pursue a green recovery, without abandoning its ongoing energy transition.

Japan and Australia have announced stimulus packages that do nothing to redress their over-reliance on coal.

Canada, a big exporter of tar sand oil, has announced direct assistance to its citizens and some measures to keep businesses afloat, but is still mulling a larger business-focused stimulus. In the