President Donald Trump continued his verbal attacks on the World Health Organization, arguing that the international body leading the fight against the virus has been too friendly toward China, and on Wednesday he threatened to withhold U.S. funding to the group.
"Very unfair," Trump said of the group, noting that America pays more than China does to support its budget.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus immediately bristled at Trump's criticism of the organization, saying countries should unify and avoid politicizing the virus "if you don't want to have many more body bags."
It was not the first time in this pandemic that the global health body has faced such criticism.
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In Japan, Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister and finance minister, recently noted that some people have started referring to the WHO as the "Chinese Health Organization" because of what he described as its close ties to Beijing. Taiwanese officials say the WHO ignored its early warnings about the virus because China refuses to allow Taiwan, a self-governing island that it claims as its territory, to become a member.
Critics say the WHO has been too trusting of the Chinese government, which initially tried to conceal the outbreak in Wuhan. Others have faulted the organization and its leader for moving too slowly in declaring a global health emergency.
When cases of a mysterious viral pneumonia first appeared in Wuhan in December, Chinese health officials silenced whistleblowers and repeatedly played down the severity of the outbreak.
Even as late as mid-January, as the virus spread beyond China's borders, Chinese officials described it as "preventable and controllable" and said there was no evidence that it could be transmitted between humans on a broad scale.
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The WHO endorsed the government's claims, saying in mid-January, for example, that human-to-human transmission had not been proved.
Even as the virus spread to more than half a dozen countries and forced China to place parts of Hubei province under lockdown in late January, the WHO did not declare it a global health emergency.
After the United States announced a ban on most foreign citizens who had recently visited China, the WHO said travel restrictions were unnecessary. The group officially called the spread of the coronavirus a pandemic March 11.
The WHO, a U.N. agency, has defended its response, saying Wednesday that it alerted the world to the threat posed by the virus in a timely manner and that it was "committed to ensuring all member states are able to respond effectively to this pandemic."
The agency's defenders say its powers over any individual government are limited, and that it has done the best it can in dealing with a public health threat with few precedents in history.
There will be time later to assess successes and failings related to "this virus and its shattering consequences," the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said Wednesday in a statement praising the WHO as "absolutely critical" to vanquishing covid-19.
U.S. ESTIMATES REVISED
Meanwhile, a computer model of the pandemic lowered its projections for the virus again Wednesday, predicting 60,000 American deaths this year, down from 92,000 a few days ago.
No model actually can predict the future with certainty, and estimates have been shifting frequently.
A rising concern among many public-health experts is the fate of states in the South and Midwest, where social distancing was imposed later than other states or never, and where infections are creeping up.
"We can prevent that by continuing the kind of mitigation that we're now doing generally throughout the country," Anthony Fauci, the federal government's top infectious-disease doctor, said in an interview on Fox News Channel. He said he was particularly worried about Pennsylvania and Colorado. "Now is not the time to pull back at all, it's the time to intensify."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said Wednesday that his state had set records for infections and deaths from the virus. In Maryland, new infection numbers jumped by 25% in one day. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said the Washington, D.C., region is just starting to climb. "We're still several weeks away from the peak."
New data released Wednesday reinforced the fearsome nature of the virus, deflating hopes that it is not as serious among younger adults or that it would have a summer off-season.
A Washington Post analysis found that at least 759 people under age 50 have died of the virus in the United States -- shattering the once-common assumption that this is a disease that threatens just the old and infirm. Children are still largely spared, and young adults are still more likely to recover than the elderly, but it appears age is less of a shield than previously imagined.
"A very fit 30-year-old triathlete is just as vulnerable as a chess-playing 45-year-old who gets no exercise," said Shawn Evans, an emergency physician at a hospital in La Jolla, Calif. "We just don't know who it is that this virus carries the master key to."
Meanwhile, CNN, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University polls released Wednesday showed between 45% and 46% of the American public rating Trump positively for his handling of the outbreak, compared with polls in late March that found about 50% approved of his management of the crisis.
Information for this article was contributed by Lateshia Beachum, Alex Horton, David A. Fahrenthold, Scott Clement, Brady Dennis, Andrew Freedman, Emily Guskin and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post; and by Javier C. Hernandez of The New York Times.
A Section on 04/09/2020