Hacker News Reader

Comment by hartator | Hacker News Reader

Not even mentioning they are playing a dangerous censorhip game, it's very weird that they pick the WHO over the CDC after all the WHO controversies. (Taiwan, slow COVID-19 response, alignment with China lines, head of WHO was part of the corrupt Ethiopian government, $200M in business class travel, and probably more scandals.)

CDC has also a way bigger budget than the WHO. $11.1B vs $4.2B.

Ref:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...

View on HN

The majority of WHO controversies are made up, the WHO are not a political entity so they do not want to comment at all on political issues; and whatever you want to say about Taiwan it is a very heated political situation.

That's also the evidence of "alignment with china": because we in the west see a failure to recognise taiwan as siding with china. Which is odd because the USA doesn't officially recognise Taiwan itself. In fact the WHO did almost exactly what a US diplomat would have done- albeit a bit delayed.

Corruption not withstanding (yeah, it's unfortunate but that thing is going to happen, what matters is the response not that it happened) it's better to have a bipartisan global concerted effort to manage these things than the centralised health organisation of a single country. Even though that country is the homestead of the service in question.

> The majority of WHO controversies are made up, the WHO are not a political entity so they do not want to comment at all on political issues; and whatever you want to say about Taiwan it is a very heated political situation.

They make overt political statements all the time. For one: calling Taiwan racist when it took issue with the WHO’s inaction after their attempts to disseminate health information.

Then Tedros calling travel bans “stigmatic.” Precisely when travel bans were needed at the onset of the spreading.

If WHO is supposed to be apolitical, it shouldn’t be parroting Chinese talking points.

Please don't twist the situation.

The Head of the WHO was attacked by racist trolls who were outwardly Taiwanese; for excluding Taiwan from membership (like _all_ U.N. projects do), And he commented about the abuse.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/taiwan-who-tedro...

He "commented about the abuse" in order to deflect from a question about why the WHO didn't take Taiwan's warnings seriously.

I think you're missing the point.

Taiwan does not exist as an entity to the WHO because it is not recognised by the United Nations.

As much as Taiwan has valuable lessons it's basically akin to asking why the WHO isn't listening to the municipality of sealand.

The journalist asking that question in the first place knew that Taiwan is a political hotbed and was looking for a story, they got one and the WHO is under the bus- at a time when we need a united front in healthcare globally.

And the racist abuse was entirely real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/taiwan-rej...

If you think that's an acceptable answer, then Tedros could have given it as an answer instead of an irrelevant diatribe about mean people online.

Public health is, like aviation for example, one of those things where recognition of "legitimate" governments has to take a back seat to de facto reality. If the WHO is unable to deal with Taiwan, then we need a different organization that can.

Reality doesn't work this way.

The only way to have real collaboration on a global level is to take no sides of any kind and only agree with absolute consensus. Anything else is picking a side and alienates part of the world.

I'm sorry that the WHO isn't playing into the politics you or I like, in this case it almost certainly would have saved lives, but that's kind of the point. As soon as they "wake up to the reality" of something such as, idk, Crimea being Russian territory? then suddenly they're alienating Ukraine and its allies.

It's stupid, and fickle, but the only winning move is not to play.

They clearly took a side, I don’t know how you can look at it any other way. In your counter factual with Russia, of course they should recognize the de facto situation and send aid if something terrible happens there, regardless of how mad that makes Ukraine.

It doesn’t really matter whether my politics were assuaged, though, because they pissed off the majority of their funding and had it cut off. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

That article provides zero evidence of "racist trolls who were outwardly Taiwanese". It's a fiction.

What is not a fiction in Mainland China evicting Africans and blocking them from Shopping malls after the government accused them of being diseased.

Where is Tedros' comments against China amid this actual documented racism?

The WHO have handled this horribly at just about every stage and deserve every bit of criticism sent their way.

Do you think it was "racist trolls" in Taiwan who made him make those factually wrong statements? Or is it more likely that the financial relationship with the WHO maintained by China influenced what they were saying? Which one is more likely?

Yeah so if he thinks Taiwan is part of china why doesn’t he blame china? They are being pretty racist towards Africans right now.

The head of WHO is corrupt.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41702662

The director of WHO tried to make Robert Mugabe the goodwill ambassador. How exactly is this "made up" and not "political"?

> The majority of WHO controversies are made up

If you don't mind me asking, could you please provide the source for one WHO controversy that is made up? Preferably one of the large ones, if applicable.

> the WHO are not a political entity so they do not want to comment at all on political issues;

The WHO is very much a political entity in the pockets of the Chinese Communist Party. There's a difference between refusing to comment on Taiwan and pretending like Taiwan doesn't exist.

Ignoring the political aspect, they've dealt with this crisis terribly, being slow to respond and giving downright false advice like telling people not to wear masks.

> pretending like Taiwan doesn't exist

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/29-03-2020-information-...

Did you watch the video of the WHO representative when asked directly about Taiwan pretending like he didn't hear the question, disconnecting, and then talking about China without so much as even mentioning the word "Taiwan"? https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/124394050651140096...

Does the CDC recognize Taiwan?

Perhaps not as a state, but it seems as likely that they would recognize data and observations given to them from Taiwan as they would data given to them from Hong Kong... or from Hubei.

You mean the same CDC that is part of a hilariously corrupt US government?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com