By Lee Cary ——Bio and Archives--April 20, 2020
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The Event: A Star-studded fund raiser for the World Health Organization (WHO)
"Contributions, all filmed in their homes, also came from Elton John, Jennifer Lopez, Stevie Wonder, British soccer star David Beckham, former U.S. first ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Billie Eilish, Bill Gates and dozens of others."
Among the "dozens" of others, appearing individually in cameo performances from their homes, were Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, Andrea Bocelli, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga and others from the usual cast of celebrities who show up to promote global-causes.
The event kicked off with a one-minute video from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus—a "superstar" according to Ms. Gaga. Tedros said:"Today, we come together as one to express our common humanity. To mourn those we have lost. To salute the health workers who save lives. And to say, with one voice, we shall not be defeated. Covid-19 has taken so much from us. But it has often given unique opportunity to put aside our differences, to break down barriers, to see and seek the best in each other. And to lift our voices for health for all. And to insure this never happens again. Never again. The World Health Organization is proud to be part of this historic show of solidarity. I want to thank Lady Gaga, the many artists and many (inaudible), global citizens, my friend Hugh Evans, and the United Nations, for bringing us together as one world together at home."Before donating to the WHO, you may be interested in an alternative opinion as to who the WHO is. Here’s one: It’s found in a long article in The Dispatch entitled "Suspending WHO Funding Should Be Just the Beginning, Let’s talk about what the organization does—and what it doesn't do". The author is Lyman Stone, "the chief information officer of the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute". Highlights of excerpts are bolded for skimmers.
WHO leadership & purpose
"It’s a body for research, conferences, and grant-writing, not frontline disease-fighting. Strikingly, the WHO’s current head, Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is not a doctor of medicine: He’s a scientist. He’s the first WHO director-general to not be a physician, helping mark the organization's gradual transition away from a focus on support for frontline providers, toward the more elite-focused mission of today."Who gets WHO’s money
"It spends from $200 to $600 million on travel expenses each year, making up between 5 percent and 20 percent of its total budget. This is more than the WHO spends on any specific disease other than polio. Some of that expense is due to WHO leaders booking themselves helicopters instead of jeeps to reach clinics. High-ranking WHO official and Canadian scientist Bruce Aylward racked up $400,000 in travel expenses helicoptering around West Africa during the Ebola epidemic, even as many African countries could not afford basic medical supplies or body bags. Some of it is due to swanky hotel bookings." "But much of it is far more mundane: The WHO pays for the travel costs of experts they invite to conferences. A huge part of the WHO’s budget is simply buying plane tickets and booking hotel rooms for prestigious experts to give speeches and present."
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WHO’s business is holding conferences
"Again, the issue here is not that having conferences is bad. It’s that a multi-billion-dollar organization that conceives its mission as being apparently primarily about convening physical meetings of experts to discuss papers they’ve already published online is a bit of a dated model."What’s WHO missing
"The WHO simply did not get the memo that the demand right now around the world is primarily for an international epidemic crisis-response strike team, not a swanky conference host."WHO leadership is biased toward Communist China
"Of course, even before COVID, Dr. Tedros made Robert Mugabe a "goodwill ambassador" for the WHO in Africa. Meanwhile, under his watch, the WHO has begun to include scientifically unproven "traditional Chinese medicine" remedies in its international diagnostic manuals. What’s particularly galling about this is that the ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine often include the very wild animals that are over-hunted and endangered around Africa, and from which so many novel zoonotic diseases originate. For the WHO to tacitly endorse these practices is absurd and dangerous."
"Under both the current and previous WHO director-generals, the WHO has done everything it can to support the propaganda of authoritarian regimes and cover up embarrassing epidemics." "WHO leaders slow-walked information. They hesitated and waned. They accepted China’s word as good, when it clearly wasn’t. Dr. Tedros spent his major speeches urging the world not to blame China, and claiming that stigmatization was as big a problem as COVID-19. As a result of the WHO’s delay, many countries delayed their responses by anywhere from one to three weeks: a crucial difference that epidemiologists say may have doubled the total death toll." "The WHO has been dominated by shills for the Chinese Communist Party for nearly a decade and a half, and in that time it has systematically suppressed information about numerous epidemic outbreaks, incompetently mismanaged multiple major outbreaks, and actively advanced propaganda for authoritarian regimes at great cost to public health." [End of Excerpts]
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