Assignment 16- Koen

Annotated Bibliography 

China’s infiltration on the WHO and its failure in COVID responses

外交部 Ministry of Foreign Affairs ROC (Taiwan) ?? “Wow, Can't Even Utter ‘Taiwan’ in the WHO? You Should Set Politics aside in Dealing with a Pandemic. FYI @WHO, 450+ News Reports from 40+ Countries so Far Positively Covered #Taiwan's Handling of #COVID19. These Reports Do Not Mistake Us as Part of China & #TaiwanCanHelp. JW Https://T.co/KbupbUb7NG.” Twitter, Twitter, 29 Mar. 2020, twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1244076656353935361.

In a tweet by the Hong Kong World City twitter account, it brings to light an interview between a Hong Kong journalist and Dr. Bruce Aylward, a physician-epidemiologist who led the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus disease. In the interview, the Hong Kong journalist asks Dr. Aylward about how the WHO would implement new strategies by looking at how Taiwan successfully responded to the COVID outbreak. In response, Dr. Aylward pretends he doesn’t hear it and when the journalist asks the same question, Dr. Aylward pushed to ask a different question and eventually hung up the interview call. The journalist then recalled Dr. Aylward and when asked about Taiwan’s response, Dr. Aylward responded with “we already talked about China’s response and it was great”. Dr. Aylward’s refusal to acknowledge Taiwan’s existence and their achievement in combatting COVID reflects China’s deep grip on the WHO. China’s political nonsense infiltrated the WHO and prevented any cooperation between Taiwan and the world to occur.

Chen, Lanhee. “The US Has a Lot to Learn from Taiwan's Covid Fight.” CNN, Cable News Network, 10 July 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/opinions/taiwan-covid-19-lesson-united-states-chen/index.html.

The CNN article applauded Taiwan’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Since the virus outbreak and with a population of 24 million people, Taiwan has had only 449 confirmed cases of Covid-19 -- and seven deaths(outbreak to time of article[July 2020]). The article goes on and breaks down Taiwan’s response into three sections. The first is Taiwan’s geopolitical fight with Mainland China which made them skeptical about China’s claims on how the virus was not able to transmit between humans. Their skepticism with China’s pronouncements led them to screen passengers from Wuhan earlier than the initial outbreak. Secondly, Taiwan has had experience with respiratory disease outbreaks from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the H1N1 flu of 2009. Both of these outbreaks that impacted Taiwan made them acknowledge the importance of responding to the disease quickly and making sure safety personal protective equipment were available and protective protocols that identified and contained symptoms of the disease. Third and last section, the SARS outbreak led Taiwan to create the National Health Command Center (NHCC) which organized how the government would respond to health crises. The NHCC effectively contained the COVID outbreak due to their transparency and strong coordination with all residents of Taiwan, keeping them up to date on the virus. The government’s push for a society-wide response to the virus in the private and public sectors allowed them to contain the spread of the virus. Due to their early response and effectiveness in containing the virus, Taiwan did not have to implement harsh lockdowns unlike other countries like the US. It was evident that Taiwan had successfully responded to the virus but China continued to restrict their ability to participate in the WHO. “Taiwan has argued that this email sounded an early alarm about possible human-to-human transmission. But WHO did not follow-up on Taiwan's inquiry, claiming that its December 31 email did not explicitly mention this form of viral transmission and that, in any case, it was already looking into the Wuhan outbreak.” from that, it was also evident that China’s inaction led to their inadequate response to the spread which made this virus become a global pandemic. The article concludes with the emphasizing the importance of transparency and how China lacked it when relaying information to the WHO and the world.Their failure to be transparent has made this virus into a costly year.

Horsley, Jamie P. “Let's End the COVID-19 Blame Game: Reconsidering China's Role in the Pandemic.” Brookings, Brookings, 21 Aug. 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/08/19/lets-end-the-covid-19-blame-game-reconsidering-chinas-role-in-the-pandemic/

In this article, the author discusses the consequences of China and how they responded to the initial outbreak at the end of 2019. The author talks about ground zero of the situation and how the virus traveled through the course of 2019 into 2020. In the transparency and hindsight section, she talks about how infections of the virus could’ve been reduced to 95% and 66% if they closed down and kept the 4 million travelers from leaving Wuhan. The author claimed that most of the patients (up to 80%) were asymptomatic and it would be difficult to identify those who had already been infected. The author also argued that the virus was already silently circulating into other countries before the major outbreak. China successfully implemented aggressive testing, contact tracing, and social distancing in Wuhan and other cities in order to contain the spread. With this article I see that the author wants cooperation between China and the US because both were at fault for not handling the virus correctly but cooperation will lead to promising results on how to combat it. The author fails to address the transparency issue with China. In order for cooperation to be successful and beneficial, honest and accurate information cannot be expected from China’s side due to the political agenda of the CCP.

Chan, Wilfred. “The WHO Ignores Taiwan. The World Pays the Price.” The Nation, 7 Apr. 2020, www.thenation.com/article/world/taiwan-who-coronavirus-china/.

This paper follows the events of COVID in the setting of Taiwan and the events that happened afterwards when the WHO ignores their warnings. In the early stages of the pandemic, the island of Taiwan had already reported 348 positive diagnoses and 5 deaths but in the long run, they would have the lowest infection rates. The author makes a point by saying that this information didn’t come from the WHO(which doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a country) and saying that when Taiwanese officials tried to warn the rest of the world, the WHO cut them off from global information networks.  CCP has kept Taiwan out of the WHO and other global organizations. In this paper, the author also mentions the infamous Dr. Aylward interview which shows him blatantly ignoring and avoiding the questions about Taiwan. In the interview, Dr. Aylward refused to acknowledge Taiwan’s existence. The author states, “When geopolitics dictate health policy, however, the most serious effects are rarely just economic. The WHO’s distortion of Taiwan’s reality has consequences that should be measured in human lives.” China’s influence over the WHO and other UN organizations has drastically made the COVID situation worse. In another part, Taiwan wrote a concerning letter to the WHO which mentioned the possibility of human to human transmission but it was revealed that the WHO had taken the letter but did not share it or acknowledge it for the rest of the organization. The author closes on the idea of sovereignty and how this battle against China with debated places like Hong Kong and Taiwan led to catastrophic events, just like the COVID outbreak.

Gebrekidan, SelamJavier C. Hernández, et al. “In Hunt for Virus Source, W.H.O. Let China Take Charge.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Nov. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/world/who-china-coronavirus.html.

The paper starts off by setting the events of the early virus stages. During the WHO conference, China stated that there was no animal to human transmission to the unknown virus. “Despite Dr. Ryan’s pronouncements, and over the advice of its emergency committee, the organization’s leadership had quietly negotiated terms that sidelined its own experts. They would not question China’s initial response or even visit the live-animal market in the city of Wuhan where the outbreak seemed to have originated”. The author goes on and states, “Nine months and more than 1.1 million deaths later, there is still no transparent, independent investigation into the source of the virus.” The grip that China has on the WHO has made it impossible for any justification of why the virus got out of control. The author brings up a past outbreak ,”The question of the virus’s origin remains a critical mystery that, if solved, could help prevent another pandemic and help scientists create vaccines and treatments. When the first SARS outbreak began spreading in China in late 2002, officials hid the epidemic for months. But when they finally acknowledged it, they soon allowed in international teams to investigate the animal source.” This same behavior happened with CHina in the past and without investigation with COVID, China is basically hindering the vaccine process. The author goes on and explains the plan of investigation in the future between China and other countries. With investigations necessary to learn about how the virus evolved from animal to human transmission, scientists around the world will be able to root out any solutions and vaccines to COVID. In their political schemes by the CCP, China has refused to give out any honest information and also refused to allow any outside investigation without having their own Chinese scientists heading up and collecting the evidence. Their political agendas have already delayed the response to COVID but their failure to acknowledge their wrongdoing and open up to the world for investigation will only delay it further. In the end, the echoes the ideas of transparency and how CHina’s behavior in misleading and covering up evidence and information has made the COVID investigation very difficult.