U.S. personnel working in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing met extensively with WHO officials there in the month of January, the time when Trump accuses the WHO of conspiring with China to hide the true danger of the novel coronavirus. According to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, U.S. officials in Beijing had at least 10 telephonic or in-person meetings — and likely more — with WHO officials in the month of January.
Trump administration officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health were among those conferring regularly in Beijing with WHO officials, twice in the week of Jan. 6, three times in the week of Jan. 13, three times in the week of Jan. 20 and twice in the week of Jan. 27. These were in addition to informal calls between U.S. and WHO officials in Beijing. The meetings, which continued in February and March, were with WHO officials ranging from those based in China to WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus; Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program; and Bruce Aylward, who led a WHO mission to Wuhan, China, in February.
The Post’s Karen DeYoung, Lena H. Sun and Emily Rauhala confirmed on Sunday that U.S. officials were working full-time at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters as the virus spread and transmitted information in real time to the Trump administration. The latest revelations add to a picture of U.S. officials working collaboratively with the WHO — until Trump, trying to blunt criticism of his own handling of the virus, decided to make the WHO a scapegoat. Last week, he said he’d cut off funding for the WHO and accused the international body of being a “tool” of communist China.
It’s certainly fair to criticize the WHO for its effusive public praise of China’s response to the outbreak, or to argue that the WHO should have supported travel restrictions or declared a pandemic sooner. And it’s obvious that the information China shared with the world was woefully inadequate. But the large volume of contacts, meetings and collaboration between U.S. officials and WHO officials make an absurdity of Trump’s accusation that the WHO was “covering up the spread of coronavirus” or failing to “share information in a timely and transparent fashion.”
Congressional Republicans are attempting to help Trump frame the WHO. Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral Institutions, called for Tedros to appear at a hearing even as the WHO, stripped of U.S. funding, tries to mitigate the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa and other impoverished places. Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, saying the WHO “downplayed the extent of the disease” and “helped Beijing disseminate propaganda,” requested voluminous documents and a briefing “no later than April 16.” Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) of the Senate Finance Committee also requested information from the WHO.
But Trump had previously praised China’s transparency himself during the outbreak, and in March he criticized the WHO for overstating the fatality rate of the virus. And the claims of WHO officials hiding information from the United States are impossible to square with what actually happened. R.J. Simonds, head of the CDC’s office in Beijing, had at least eight meetings with the WHO in January, I’m told. HHS’s health attache in Beijing had at least three in January. At the same time, higher U.S. officials conferred with their Chinese counterparts, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar with the Chinese health minister.
Trump has also faulted the WHO for failing to gain earlier access to Wuhan, even though the WHO did not have an office in Wuhan — and the United States has a consulate there but reportedly evacuated it as the virus raged. The WHO had to wait until late January to be able to conduct a Wuhan field visit, after China allowed experts from Taiwan and Hong Kong to visit the city.
The State Department’s official spokesmen did not respond to my questions. I suppose I can’t blame them. It is impossible to refute the obvious conclusion: The problem here wasn’t a lack of information but a lack of presidential action.
The Washington Post is now the only place you can read my columns online. Sign up for this special subscription offer to keep reading. And thank you!
You can also sign up to receive my columns in your inbox as soon as they’re published.
Read more: