On Trump's "Cindy Lou WHO" Letter Circa May 2020

A letter written by Trump to the Director General of the World Health Organization [WHO] appears to throw ‘serious shade’ at the actions of WHO with regard to the most recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic turmoil that has caused hundreds of thousands of people to get sick and thousands of those sick to die.

What, exactly, are Trump’s allegations about his reasons for suspending funding to the World Health Organization? What was his excuse for our non-appearance at the last conclave?

Point by unscrupulous point, these are Trump’s very own words and the truth that clings to it:

Source and Origins

TRUMP: “The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. [WHO] failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.”

He alleges, in general, that the “novel” coronavirus -which began in “Wuhan itself”- is new or novel and that it where it began. Pinocchio Pants on Fire. See below:

Novel coronavirus infection — update — 6 MARCH 2013 — The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia has informed WHO of a new confirmed case of infection with the novel coronavirus (NCoV). The patient … was hospitalized on 10 February 2013 and died on 19 February 2013. Preliminary investigation indicated that the patient had no contact with previously reported cases of NCoV infection and did not have recent history of travel. To date, WHO has been informed of a global total of 14 confirmed cases of human infection with NCoV, including eight deaths. Of the total number, seven cases, including five deaths, have been reported from Saudi Arabia. Based on the current situation and available information, WHO encourages all Member States (MS) to continue their surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and to carefully review any unusual patterns…WHO continues to closely monitor the situation.

[WHO] didn’t set off global alarms about this human- to- human transmission at the time because there was no need to do so.

Major Public Health Concern

TRUMP: “By no later than December 30, 2019, [WHO] in Beijing knew that there was a major public health concern in Wuhan. Between December 26 and December 30, China’s media highlighted evidence of a new virus emerging from Wuhan, based on patient data sent to multiple Chinese genomics companies. Additionally, during this period, Dr. Zhang Jixian…told China’s health authorities that a new coronavirus was causing a novel disease that was, at the time, afflicting approximately 180 patients.”

In June of 2018, the following was published by the National Library of Medicine: ‘Discovery of Novel Bat Coronaviruses in South China That Use Same Receptor as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus’ . The virus had found its human transmitting origin in the Middle East as early as 2012, not in Wuhan in late 2019, according to this report. It spread from there to South China by some means not immediately apparent, and from South China, it seems to have landed in a few of the African nations and then back in Wuhan Province.

Like America thinks its own systems and numerical and alphabetical and historic innovations and laws originated in Greece and Rome, Trump thinks the novel coronavirus began in Wuhan in 2019 when nothing could be further removed from truth. {Read the letter for yourself HERE. Information supplied by NPR.}

President Obama’s Actions Withstood The Test of Time

By 2014, for years before it spread to China from the Middle East, U.S. President Barack Obama had a pandemic playbook already in place and was highly prepared to attack in with our borders and from the outside, as he did with the EBOLA virus. His actions on that threat limited stateside American deaths to two persons and stopped it at its source. He chose to be on top of the 8-ball rather than behind it, and spent no time obsessing with George W. Bush’s legacy, rather took the time out to work with him on Bush Wishlist items that remained unfulfilled when Bush left office — which was the right thing to do to make a proper and complete transfer of leadership.

Note:

Obama’s science advisors outline plan for faster pandemic vaccine — Aug 19, 2010 (CIDRAP News) — In light of vaccine production problems that delayed the delivery of the pandemic H1N1 vaccine, a report by President Barack Obama’s science advisers released today said targeted investments in five specific areas could trim the time needed to quickly produce enough to protect the nation by weeks or months. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) said if federal officials follow the roadmap, within 1 to 3 years the country will be in a better position to more quickly speed production of a pandemic vaccine as well as medical countermeasures against other diseases or bioterrorism attacks. The five key areas, as well as longer-term goals, are included in an 87-page report that appears on the PCAST Web site. Some of the pandemic flu vaccine recommendations are echoed in a federal public health countermeasure review, also released today, that explores the way officials procure vaccines, equipment, and supplies needed for response to bioterror attacks and other medical emergencies.

What’s Taiwan Got To Do, Got To Do With It?

TRUMP: "By the next day, Taiwanese authorities had communicated information to [WHO] indicating human to human transmission of a new virus. Yet [WHO] chose not to share any of this critical information with the rest of the world, probably for political reasons.”

Trump not only infers why [WHO] did not share the information, with no proof of what they ‘probably’ did it for, but also infers that [WHO] willingly chose NOT to share the information with ‘the rest of the world.’

The truth is that “the next day” in Trump’s personal timeline had already happened nearly six years earlier, coming from its source of origin in Saudi Arabia. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, reported in July 2016:

Abstract: In January 2013, several months after Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was first identified in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, began surveillance for MERS-CoV. We analyzed medical chart and laboratory data collected by the Health Authority–Abu Dhabi during January 2013–May 2014. Using real-time reverse transcription PCR, we tested respiratory tract samples for MERS-CoV and identified 65 case-patients. Of these patients, 23 (35%) were asymptomatic at the time of testing, and 4 (6%) showed positive test results for >3 weeks (1 had severe symptoms and 3 had mild symptoms)…This report highlights the potential for virus shedding by mildly ill and asymptomatic case-patients. These findings will be useful for MERS-CoV management and infection prevention strategies.

Why his decisions were not based on historical actionable references is anyone’s guess. We could infer that he actually does think the world only began after he got to DC as he infers that Taiwan’s messages were more than they were in the global hemisphere.

But we won’t.

Trump’s reference to the “Taiwanese authorities” didn’t even merit a mention in this recent communication, because the “new” virus, in fact, was not new at all. Taiwan was communicating with WHO about what was going on in Taiwan, as they should have, not on a global potential reactor. By the time they reported on what was going on in Taiwan, the word was already out about its origins and which way the spread was going — and [WHO] made it very clear that all member states (including the USA) needed to keep an eye on it and keep reporting their findings so they could track it. Trump was the only one pulling up on the Global Late Freight.

The Rest of the World Theory

Yes, long before Trump decided everything going on in the world centered around only his presence in it, [WHO] and the CDC had already notified the ‘rest of the world.’ Long before the ‘novel coronavirus’ made its way to South China or the Wuhan province.

But rather than focus his research on what happened from the very start or even acknowledge his wrongheaded decision in shedding the pandemic team our President had already put in place, he focused on communicating a reputation of self-non-responsibility for the absolute role that he played in its spread into and around the United States.

Note the following information that was available to Trump (and the whole world) well and long before December 2019. President Obama told them so:

In April of 2003, the New England Journal of Medicine reported “The novel coronavirus might have a role in causing SARS. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was recently identified as a new clinical entity. 1,2 Patients present with fever, dry cough, dyspnea, headache, and hypoxemia. … Death may result from progressive respiratory failure due to alveolar damage. 3 SARS appears to be caused by an unknown infectious agent that is transmitted from human to human. The World Health Organization (WHO) had recorded 2353 cases by April 4, 2003. About 4 percent of patients with SARS have died. … The epidemic has spread from Asia to other continents through international travel. The WHO has established a network of international laboratories to facilitate the identification of the causative agent of SARS. As part of this network, we have identified and characterized a novel coronavirus in patients with SARS.”

Before you say “SARS is not the novel coronavirus — they are not one and the same”, remember that SARS is or was the effect or condition of the infection, not the cause or the virus itself.

Trump is not a medical professional, his responsibility and his non-existent pandemic team’s responsibility was to rely on all available information, line upon line and precept upon precept. It was imperative for him to do so, but his jealousies of President Obama caused him to look the other way and pretend that he made it all up, that it was some kind of a hoax.

Trump chose to ignore and then ultimately underplay all available references and information from WHO that had been there for no less than eight years prior to 2019. His need to decimate President Obama’s legacy took outrageous control of his care for the American people, who have been made “great” in every area except for that which is good and righteous in the sight of God.

The ‘world’ already knew and had open unfettered access to all of this information and [WHO] had been there all along, from the start- making sure the information got where it needed to go.

International Health Regulations

TRUMP: “The International Health Regulations require countries to report the risk of a health emergency within 24 hours. But China did not inform [WHO] of several cases of pneumonia, of unknown origin, until December 31, 2019 …”

“China did not inform” does not implicate [WHO] in failure to report in a timely manner; and “several cases of pneumonia” is not a reason to activate a fearmongering scare about how pneumonia might become COVID-19.

It appears that the 24-hour time frame Trump speaks of began on December 30, 2019. He directly contradicts himself in the second bullet point of his own letter by stating that China had already reported it sometime between December 26-December 30 and when the word got out officially on December 30 that it was spreading and threatening to become a pandemic, it was reported on December 31, 2019, likely less than 24 hours later.

Virology Studies Recapitulated

Trump goes on to accuse Dr. Zhang Yongzhen of the Shanghai Public Health Center of not publishing the genomic information about the 'virus sequence' until January 11, 2020.

In fact, the American Society for Microbiology’s Journal of Virology reported, in June of 2017 … “Although shrews are one of the largest groups of mammals, little is known about their role in the evolution and transmission of viral pathogens, including coronaviruses (CoVs). We captured 266 Asian house shrews (Suncus murinus) in Jiangxi and Zhejiang Provinces, China, during 2013 to 2015. CoV RNA was detected in 24 Asian house shrews, with an overall prevalence of 9.02%. Complete viral genome sequences were successfully recovered from the RNA-positive samples.”

Dr. Zhang was credited as one of the authors of that virology study in 2017. The information was already there and had already been studied and put forward in President Obama's playbook.

By the time Trump heard or cared to hear about it, it was a series of older studies that were not six days old, but three years old at minimum. This information was not kept secret, it was widely available on the Internet for anyone looking. He chose not to look at it until January 2020 when his armor bearers were searching, not for answers, but for a way to exonerate Trump and an excuse to pull funding. Yet he had no reason NOT to know.

Trump asserts that [WHO] ‘gratuitously reaffirmed’ China’s now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans …

Yet…

Six to 10 Pinocchios Later…

How was WHO ‘reaffirming China’ on the fact of ‘not passing a virus between humans’ that had been passed between humans since as early as 2012 before it it even made it to China?

[WHO] never said that, and even though Trump was proven wrong about it in April of 2020, he repeated it a month later in his letter dated May 2020.

As to [WHO] waiting until late in the day to declare the outbreak a 'public health emergency' (pandemic), that is a direct result of budget-slashing, something that should send Trump a very clear message about the internal damage that he himself has done by slashing budgets within America, and by dismantling President Obama’s Pandemic Response Team, such as it was. A "Task Force" of one kind or another held by various stock market-driven corporations and Trump friends is not a cover-all for governmental malfeasance.

Trump also speaks of the ‘silencing and punishing of people in China’ who were responsible to report, for withholding this information from and to the proper global authorities. Though it is true that these key players were silenced, threatened and punished by Chinese authorities, his position in this letter overrides the demand to bring the information forward. At that time, his role of 'protector and defender' of U.S. interests and public health policy should have gone into high alert, but instead he sat by and allowed it to happen. What does happen when you send a boy in to do a man's job?

He needed an experienced President's help and did not rely on the one person with the answers he needed.

Travel Restrictions : Rotterdam to Japan

As you will read for yourself in his personal letter, three of Trump’s bullet points were with regard to non-specific or 'unforeseen' travel restrictions, but he does point out that he went ahead and closed U.S. borders to restrict travel from neighboring nations and a few particular coronavirus 'hotspots', but only after THIS happened, and THIS. In the meantime, the neighboring nations had already closed their borders, so Trump's parenthetical "oh by the way" moves were reactive rather than proactive.

His ploy to relieve himself of responsibility for “allowing the cruise ship” to dock in Florida and for “not knowing about” and “not giving permission for” the airplane from Japan that apparently set it off in the USA is irresponsible on his part. He could have made it his business to know in January 2020 instead of guessing that "we would be fine" or "it would all be over by Easter Sunday," because US travel restrictions should have been in place long before April 1st.

None of these other countries were responsible for Trump’s lackadaisical response to air and sea and bus travel restrictions with regard to his own country, that much is certain.

Kicking The 'Blame It on The Rain' Can

While Trump officials were busy ‘kicking the can of blame’ around, people were dying and the only thing left to do after that was to let it spread and “hope” they could contain it after a certain number of pre-calculated losses.

Those pre-calculated deaths or losses, one hundred thousand and counting ever upward by the way, represent your own relatives and friends and loved ones and co-workers who have died from it, America.

They have names and faces (on the legacy obituary pages) and the White House has not acknowledged even the 1,000 (about 10-percent to date) that were posted on the front page of the New York Times. Instead of saying something remotely sympathetic, they chose to acknowledge it all by investigating to determine if all the names on it died from COVID-19. Yet and still, even if some of the names should not have been published there, there were and are many many more waiting to take their places, even beyond that one thousand.

The 100,000+ is now known stateside as “incalculable” losses. The NYT made its point.

Asymptomatic or No?

Trump stated in his CYA-letter that [WHO] cited Chinese resources on whether or not people without COVID-19 symptoms could be spreaders of this season of novel coronavirus, but here is something even more problematic that may be seen as over-simplistic, but here it goes…WHY EVEN TAKE THE CHANCE?

Armchair President or no, Trump said that the data was not reliable and then twists around the fork in his tongue to say that he needed to rely on the data that they did not have at the time. Here’s where to insert the obligatory “wtf?!” characters. If the data is not reliable, GET YOUR OWN.

That still wasn’t a reason to grinchily cut off [WHO] funding, that was a reason to infuse more funding to get to the bottom of it even faster.

Will it? Won’t it?

It costs money to find out if the spread of this virus could be both symptomatic and asymptomatic, and it was imperative--all things considered--that we spend what was needed and more to find out with a quickness.

Yet the snow sled with the little horned carrier dog and all of the monetary Christmas packages was ascending up the mountain far too fast for anyone to catch it. Precious time has gone by and nobody may much feel like singing “Fah who foraze” or “Dah who doraze” between now and December 25, 2020, a year after. They will only be forced to remember that they've had to bury and cremate loved ones who should have been with them for the holidays over something that was thoroughly avoidable.

Trump’s letter states that by the time [WHO] declared a pandemic in March of 2020, more than 4,000 had already died in 114 other countries.

Were we waiting on a word?

Timeline of Month-End Trump Statements

A month after Trump was informed about the virus’ potential and its spreading, he said this Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.” — Trump in a speech in Michigan.

The following month, he said this Feb. 29: “And I’ve gotten to know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well. Everything is really under control.” — Trump in a speech at the CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C.

By the end of March 2020, Trump said this in the Rose Garden (CLICK HERE).

The peak in fatalities is two weeks away … [hasn't peaked yet] ...the model shows we can save more than one million lives … [nevermind there are more than 330 million American lives to be considered here] … they will be great lives, better than ever... [minus the dead who won’t be home for Christmas, of course, of any other holiday period] … over one million Americans have been tested … [UPDATE: As of May 22, 2020, more than 13 million Americans are reported to been tested, and more than 1.7 million have come back positive according to the CDC; and the numbers, from there, are rising rather than dissipating] …

In the Rose Garden speech, the news information release procedures seem to be going along swimmingly and then we get a quick commercial interruption from Jockey International and the CEO of MyPillow, with consideration to cotton masks and hospital gowns and scrubs, not a bad mention.

Moving on …

We won’t belabor all of the questionable statements made about ventilators and respirators and face shields, (thank you Honeywell, United Technologies, et al) but the daily news coming from hospitals is keeping us informed about what is going on there and the statements made at this conference border more on advertising of products for companies than on actual statistics about how these products are helping to flatten the curve.

However, the anti-malarial drug chloroquine (hydrochloroquine?) was mentioned, as well as deployment of the National Guard and all of the millions of dollars worth of alleged surplus PPE that was planed out to Italy.

Here is what The Mayo Clinic and WebMD have to say about the anti-malarial drug chloroquine that Trump claims to have taken.

As treatment for COVID-19, it is still in the experimental stages for those who don’t mind being the crash test dummies. Let us know how that works out, but last we heard, it was a no-go.

Sometime in Mid-March

Trump seems to have finally caught up with the rest of the world sometime in mid-March.

He did touch on, in this letter to [WHO], the racially discriminatory practices of the Chinese people against Africans located in cities throughout the country. It doesn’t come close to the racially discriminatory practices of America against African-Americans here in his own country, but that’a whole topic all by itself.

Suffice it to say that Trump says in his May 2020 reproach letter to [WHO] that China had bungled the entire communications ladder and [WHO] allowed it, but that is not what Trump said about it on January 30, 2020.

He said they were "working “closely” with China, which should mean that China had nothing to hide at the time. All [WHO] had to go on was the data they were being fed. If he was working that close to China, he had opportunity to know what the implications were before [WHO] did.

We do a lot of talking about “self-reliance” in this country, but the practice of it is another story all together.

China’s Issues

To be sure, China has not been on the up and up about their own actions, and their ‘seen manifesto’ (constitution) is nothing for them to be proud of, but when Trump demands ‘independent investigation’ into the origins of the virus, he ignores all the specific old data dated between 2003 and 2013 coming from the Middle East. He disregards an entire decade of specific information that was already available about its origins and where and how and which way it was spreading, which is what made President Obama push the play button on his watch.

Blame Game-ism

The COVID-19 Response Team formulated by the [WHO] was in specific response to the newly now-announced global pandemic. The United States’ Pandemic Response Team could easily have beat them to the punch and actually MADE America “great” and Number One if it had not been stifled and then summarily dismantled on Trump’s watch.

Trump missed a unique opportunity to make his campaign speeches about 'America First' and 'America Great' stick with people who aren’t about to do the needed research on their own. The people who will take him at his word, however superficial, would have been able to beat their hairy chests and claim some kind of victory rather than have to repeat after Trump ... “it’s really everybody else’s fault but mine.”

Trump falls out of place by admitting at the end of the May “Cindy Lou WHO” letter that China’s actions, the actions of the Middle East and Taiwan, and of other nations did not actually begin in late 2019, but he began his tirade by saying it was not available. He then summarily dismisses this available information and basically shows that that he had no reason not to have been on top of it from the very start.

The information was available all along, and he chose to ignore it rather than act on it, then fell back on the far more important #Obamablame Syndrome. Bottom Line: He missed too many [WHO] meetings to have known anything at all, even what he claims to know now. He's asking them questions he should have already had an answer to.

He ends the letter by saying “It is clear the repeated missteps by YOU [WHO] and YOUR organization have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the [WHO] is if it can demonstrate independence from China.”

Wait.

The way "forward" is independence from China? How is that going to help? Isn't the way forward for [WHO] to continue to work toward better solutions, communications reform, and help with finding a universal vaccine?

Trump further insinuates that discussions are underway about how to reform [WHO], presumably so they can get US funding again. He states that [WHO] is not serving American interests and that funding could be permanently ended if they do not comply with his personal wishes. Permanently? Not hardly.

He says nothing about his own repetitive missteps in containing the virus at its source and keeping it from coming here, except to say that somewhere between China, [WHO] and President Obama, he “should have been told earlier.”

He was told. Far in advance.

WHO’s on First

Strange, is it not, how [WHO] was always on their communicative A-game with American “interests” until Trump got there.

No other U.S. President sans him has found a reason to defund [WHO] for not staying on top of a pending global pandemic allegedly coming out of Wuhan. If this was its source in his mind, then it can never be ‘independent’ from China, or anywhere else for that matter...unless it plans to stop functioning and bow down to King Donald and his latent thought processes in exchange for cash.

Why would [WHO] need to be independent from China when it is not supposed to plead allegiance to any nation, but to do its job. A job it has done since 1948 without Trump's input or ideas-and still does not need them now.

Trump seems to think that holding the money hostage until he gets what he wants — effervescent shade and manipulation of the markets on Chinese trade — is going to help matters, or he doesn't care.

Either way, Trump has made America a #stakeholdernot, so they don’t have to speak to any of us. At all. About anything. They can get funds elsewhere and override all that trumpean nonsense, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, et al.

It stands to reason that it only gets worse from here. [WHO] can’t be held as an economic hostage to Trump's America’s grinchly kidnapping demands.

They need to get back to their main job of serving ALL Member States, not just American interests, as they had already been doing since 1948.

Trump simply can't tell them what to do, money or no.

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