Covid-19: WHO Tedros Has a Long History of Cover-Ups #Norway Erna Solberg

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is facing increased scrutiny over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than two million people around the world and killed at least 150,000.

Adhanom, who goes by the name Tedros, is an Ethiopian microbiologist who, with the help of China, began a five-year term as head of the WHO in July 2017.

He has been accused of misrepresenting the severity and spread of the coronavirus in an attempt to pander to China.

The historical record shows that Tedros, the first African and the first non-physician to lead the WHO, has a long history of covering up epidemics and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, where he served as the minister of health and minister of foreign affairs.

In May 2017, when Tedros emerged as the top candidate in a three-way race to lead the WHO, the New York Times reported accusations that Tedros covered up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia when he was the country’s health minister between 2005 and 2012.

Tedros claimed that cholera outbreaks occurring in 2006, 2009 and 2011 were only “acute watery diarrhea” — an infectious disease known in the rest of the world as cholera.

He said that the outbreaks were limited to remote areas of the country where laboratory testing was “difficult” and that international concerns were overblown.

The epidemics eventually reached neighboring countries including Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. The New York Times explained:

“WHO officials have complained privately that Ethiopian officials are not telling the truth about these outbreaks. Testing for Vibrio cholerae bacteria, which cause cholera, is simple and takes less than two days.

“During earlier outbreaks, various news organizations, including The Guardian and The Washington Post, reported that unnamed Ethiopian officials were pressuring aid agencies to avoid using the word ‘cholera’ and not to report the number of people affected.

“But cholera bacteria were found in stool samples tested by outside experts. As soon as severe diarrhea began appearing in neighboring countries, the cause was identified as cholera.

“United Nations officials said more aid could have been delivered to Ethiopia had the truth been told.”

WHO Director Tedros Has a Long History of Cover-Ups: The director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Lawrence O. Gostin, said that he called attention to Ethiopia’s long history of denying cholera outbreaks because he believed the WHO “might lose its legitimacy” if it is run by a representative of a country that itself covers up epidemics.

Tedros dismissed the accusations against him by playing the race card. He said that criticism of him stemmed from a “typical colonial mind-set aimed at… discrediting a candidate from a developing country.”

The Guardian reported that the Ethiopian government has been reluctant to acknowledge the cholera outbreaks “for fear of damaging the economy.” The Washington Post explained that Ethiopian authorities have a propensity for refusing to call bad news by its real name.

Tedros’s cover-ups continued after he became the director general of the WHO. In September 2017, a group of American physicians, in an open letter addressed to Tedros, accused him of failing to investigate outbreaks of cholera in Sudan:

“The mandate of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) could hardly be clearer; in the words of the Organization: ‘Our primary role is to direct and coordinate international health within the United Nations’ system. And yet this impressive mandate is daily made a mockery of by WHO’s refusal to refer to the cholera epidemic raging in Sudan by name. Neither your organization nor the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs will refer explicitly to the fact that what you continue to call “Acute Watery Diarrhea” is in fact cholera, Vibrio cholera — a fact established by laboratory tests in Sudan.”

“Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan is reprehensible. Your failure to transport stool samples from victims in Sudan to Geneva for official confirmation of cholera makes you fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread, out of control, with daily new reports confirming that this is indeed a cholera epidemic.”

“The inevitable history that will be written of this epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light.”

Marxist-Leninist Tedros appoints Robert Mugabe to UN Goodwill Ambassador

WHO Director Tedros Long History of Cover-Ups: In October 2017, Tedros appointed the late Robert Mugabe, the authoritarian leader of Zimbabwe, as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Tedros had praised Zimbabwe as “a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies to provide health care to all.” After global outrage, Tedros rescinded the appointment.

Writing for the Sunday Times, Rebecca Myers wrote:

“Diplomats said [Mugabe’s] appointment was a political payoff from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — the WHO’s first African director-general — to China, a long-time ally of Mugabe, and the 50 or so African states that helped to secure Tedros’s election earlier this year…

“Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for the Ethiopian, using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries.”

Columnist Frida Ghitis, writing for The Washington Post added:

“The WHO director’s decision to honor the dictator is a misjudgment of breathtaking proportions. The stain it has left on the WHO will not be easily cleansed. We must find out what was behind it. If an investigation proves that giving this prestigious appointment to a brutal human rights violator was the result of corruption, Tedros must leave. In fact, Tedros’s tenure should already be regarded as probationary, and his judgment in question….

“Some speculate that Tedros’s decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.”

In July 2018, China Global Television Network (CGTN), a state-owned media outlet, reported that Tedros had met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing. It was Tedros’s second visit to China since he took over as the director general of WHO. CGTN stated:

“The Chinese state councilor [Wang Yi] went on to say that healthcare was an important part of global governance and China’s national development strategy.”

“He said Beijing was willing to deepen cooperation with the WHO under a number of initiatives, such as their joint ‘Health Silk Road’ project, various China-Africa health development plans, as well as the organization’s five-year action plan for health, employment and inclusive economic growth.

“Dr. Tedros welcomed Wang’s comments, saying their enhanced cooperation would improve health standards in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.”

As Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Tedros, an executive member of the Marxist-Leninist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), oversaw a massive expansion of China’s role in Ethiopia. China is Ethiopia’s biggest foreign investor, its largest trading partner and also its largest lender.

Writing for Politico, Simon Marks explained:

“Over the course of the last decade, Ethiopia has become increasingly dependent on Chinese investment.

“The Export-Import Bank of China put up $2.9 billion of the $3.4 billion railway project connecting Ethiopia to Djibouti, providing the landlocked country access to ports. Chinese funds were also instrumental in the construction of Ethiopia’s first six-lane highway — an $800 million project — the metro system, and several skyscrapers dotting Addis Ababa’s skyline.

“Beijing also accounts for nearly half of Ethiopia’s external debt and has lent at least $13.7 billion to Ethiopia between 2000 and 2018, data compiled by John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies shows.”

Ethiopia is now ensnared in a debt trap that leaves the country vulnerable to pressure from Beijing.

Timeline of WHO’s Efforts to Pander to China

WHO Director Tedros Has a Long History of Cover-Ups: Several media outlets have published timelines of Chinese efforts to conceal the extent of the coronavirus from the rest of the world (here, here, here and here). Following is an abbreviated timeline of Tedros’s complicity with China:

• December 30. Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old doctor, sounded the alarm about a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Li sent a message to a group of other doctors warning that seven patients had been quarantined at Wuhan Central Hospital after coming down with a respiratory illness that seemed like the SARS coronavirus. The police in Wuhan subsequently reprimanded and silenced Li, requiring him to sign a letter acknowledging that he was making “false comments.”
• December 31. Taiwan contacted the WHO after seeing Li’s reports of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in Wuhan, but the WHO kept it from the public.
• January 1. An employee of a genomics company in Wuhan received a phone call from an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, ordering the company to stop testing samples from Wuhan related to the new disease and to destroy all existing samples.
• January 3. China’s National Health Commission (NHC), the nation’s top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them.
• January 9. China identified the new coronavirus as the cause of a mystery disease in Wuhan.
• January 14. WHO tweeted: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus.” A day earlier, WHO had reported the first case outside of China — in Thailand.
• January 20. China confirmed human-to-human transmission of new coronavirus.
• January 21. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the United States in the state of Washington. The patient had recently returned from Wuhan.
• January 23. Wuhan, a city of 11 million, was placed in lockdown. China closed all internal transit from Wuhan to other cities in China, but did nothing to stop international flights.
• January 28. Tedros praised China’s “transparency” regarding the virus.
• January 30. Tedros visited China and praised the country’s leadership for “setting a new standard for outbreak response.” He also declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
• January 31. The Trump Administration announced travel restrictions to and from China, effective February 2.
• February 4. Tedros rebuked President Trump’s travel restrictions, saying that they “can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”
• February 7. Doctor Li Wenliang, the coronavirus whistleblower, died in Wuhan after being infected with the virus. His death sparked an outpouring of grief and anger online in China.
• February 14. Tedros said that WHO was “seeking clarity on how clinical diagnoses are being made so that other respiratory illnesses, including influenza, are not getting mixed into the COVID-19 data.” He also warned against criticizing China: “This is the time for solidarity, not stigma.”
• February 28. WHO, in a 40-page report, praised China’s response to COVID-19: “China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic.”
• March 11. Tedros finally declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic: “We expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.”
• March 18. An executive director of WHO, Mike Ryan, criticized President Trump: “We need to be careful of the language we use lest it lead to profiling. The pandemic flu of 2009 started in North America, and we didn’t call it the North American flu. This is a time to move forward and fight the virus together. Viruses know no borders and they don’t care about your ethnicity, the color of your skin or how much money you have in the bank.”
• March 20. Tedros said that Wuhan reported no new cases of coronavirus.
• March 29. Ai Fen, a Wuhan doctor who was among the first to alert other medics to the spread of coronavirus, disappeared amid concerns that she had been detained by Chinese authorities. Her whereabouts are unknown.
• April 8. A day after U.S. President Donald Trump accused the WHO of being “very China-centric,” and threatened to cut funding to WHO, Tedros responded: “Please quarantine politicizing COVID. We will have many body bags in front of us if we don’t behave.” Tedros also said that criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic was motivated by racism.
• April 16. A second wave of Covid-19 erupted in the northern Chinese city of Harbin.