And whoever saves a life,
it shall be reckoned as though
he has saved the life of all humankind.
– The Quran, 5:32
A new virus now threatens to become the most lethal contagion the world has suffered in a hundred years – it is the crisis of our lifetimes – and President Trump unilaterally interrupts U.S. aid to the international community’s central coordinating health body, the World Health Organization (WHO), on the pretext of its “China-centric” partiality, its “covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” and, therefore, its “severely mismanaging” failure to give him and America sufficient warning of the pandemic’s dire approach.
It is a feckless strategy to undermine the most crucially pivotal international health institution at the peak of a global pandemic. WHO is doing the indispensable work of monitoring, coordinating, and acting as a clearinghouse of analysis and information for the nations of the world combating this virulently infectious outbreak. It is destructive, deadly, and deeply immoral to suspend or cut any support that enables them to wage that fight at full tilt for the health and safety of all humanity in the heat of this pitched battle.
First, President Trump’s claim of a WHO coronavirus cover up to curry favor with China is an abject and frightening denial of a reality that Americans and the entire world witnessed firsthand. As early as five days after China first released information about an emerging respiratory infection, WHO officials sounded a global alarm of a “pneumonia of unknown cause.” Four days later, it relayed that “Chinese authorities [had isolated] a novel (new) coronavirus as its cause. Five days more, and WHO confirmed its “possible … human-to-human transmission.”
Seventeen days after WHO’s first alert Covid-19 reached America. Trump declared, “We have it totally under control. … It’s going to be just fine.” Two days later, Trump praised China for “working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well.”
From January 24 to March 11, Trump was still reassuring us, “It will go away” and “the vast majority of Americans – the risk is very, very low.” Instituting a partial travel ban on China February 2 remains the sole intervening move he made until March 16. In all, that is 70 days of virtual inaction – vital lifesaving time frittered away – on his part.
The U.S. – though $198.3 million delinquent in its membership dues under President Trump to the 194-international-member UN health body – supplies about 20 percent of WHO’s funding, the budget of which is roughly that of a major U.S. hospital, $2.4 billion annually. We applaud the U.S. for providing WHO more funds than any other nation, at $431.5 million yearly, 118.5 million of which are annual dues. This morally upright care and service by Americans in the behalf of our global human family should not cease.
