I have been waiting a long time to write about this topic (partially because of the hacking attack on the site, partially because this is a fun topic).
With Coronavirus-A-Palooza running roughshod around the world like a Guns N Roses concert with security supplied by the Hell’s Angels, people look for someone or something to guide us. One such something is the World Health Organization. The Left loves the WHO for multiple reasons, with the main one being…Orange Man Bad.
Yet, are they truly the go-to folks for a global pandemic? That’s a matter of opinion, just like these Leftist Lexicon pieces you kind folks keep reading and circulating. However, unlike some of the people rooting for the WHO, my opinions tend not to be tainted by anti-Trump ideology. Plus, I tend to bathe regularly.
World Health Organization
What the Left thinks it means – a team of professionals devoted to scientific discovery and the advancement of medical science as they combat global health issues
What it really means – a group that is to medicine what the United Nations is to global stability
The real definition isn’t an accident. The WHO is a part of the UN, which should raise more than a few eyebrows considering what the latter group is known to have done. Unless, of course, you’re cool with child rape, giving a non-existent country more of a platform than a member nation, and allowing such human rights champions as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria spots on the UN Human Rights Council unironically.
Well, at least the WHO is above board, right? Yeaaaaah, not so much. Just with the COVID-19 situation, we’ve seen them proclaim there was no evidence of person-to-person transmittal of the virus, even as it was literally happening. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, spoke glowingly of the way China handled the COVID-19 outbreak in January, even as China hid their real numbers. Although his name would get you at least a Triple Word Score in Scrabble, his value has fallen more than oil prices, and just about as rapidly.
Although this begs a lot of questions, one of the primary ones should be what the WHO actually does. If you listen to the Left, you would think they’re hard at work in laboratories working around the clock trying to figure out how to combat COVID-19. Which, of course, is bullshit. As you might expect with any organization connected to the UN and with the word “World” in its name, it’s a bureaucratic nightmare that would make the DMV look like The Flash.
And just like with any bureaucracy, the WHO has a nasty spending habit with few tangible results. According to an internal report, the WHO spent nearly $192 million in 2018 on…travel. And that number was down from what they spent in 2017 on the same expenses. And what did the World Health Organization spend in 2018 on medical supplies and materials? Half of what it spent on travel. And we’re not talking about economy class flights here. The WHO lives large off our tax dollars.
That’s right, kids. We are the number one financial contributor to the WHO, even higher than the UN itself. Which is exactly what we do with the UN: pay out the nose for service that we would ask to see the manager for if we received in real life. Especially if we were named Karen. (Yes, I went there.)
The aforementioned internal report also mentioned the WHO spends its time trying to find medical solutions for social and economic problems, which takes it out of the realm of medicine and into the world of Leftist ideology. The Left keeps trying to apply science to problems that have little to do with science because it lends credibility to their hare-brained ideas that have yet to actually work. Most people, unfortunately, buy into this line of thinking because we’ve been taught to listen to the experts. Well, at least until the experts prove the Left wrong.
The Left needs the WHO to be the experts with COVID-19 because it ticks all of their ideological boxes: a bloated unaccountable entity focused more on social justice than actually doing its job. Plus, more people are going to reflexively believe the WHO over President Trump’s COVID-19 task force solely because of the name. This is a logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority, where the seemingly logical conclusion is based solely on because someone with presumed superiority over us says so. That is the go-to Leftist position because they believe they are the experts.
Yet, when you consider what the WHO is doing with the money we’re giving them and what they should be doing, it’s hard for me to say they are the experts we need to be listening to on COVID-19. It’s clear they’re operating either as a willing culprit in the whitewashing of China’s poor handling of the disease or useful idiots doing China’s bidding at the expense of its reputation. Just like CNN!
And until the WHO can show the class they are completing their assignments within the set parameters, we should trust them as much as we trust Joe Biden’s memory. Given how they’re more enamored with cushy travel perks than with decidedly non-cushy jobs working on behalf of the world’s health, I’m guessing we’ll see that happening about the time Stacey Abrams accepts losing in 2018.