February 13, 2025
How Coronavirus Has Challenged the World Health Organization
The fight over the WHO has become yet another front in the emerging fight over American geopolitics in the era of a rising China.
The fight over the WHO has become yet another front in the emerging fight over American geopolitics in the era of a rising China.

The World Health Organization’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, like so many complicated narratives that must be simplified in today’s head-spinning news cycle, has become an ideological Rorschach test. If, before the pandemic, you were nationalistic, skeptical of international organizations, and hostile to China, you’re probably inclined to view the WHO’s deference toward Beijing as the inevitable response of a toothless organization that has been co-opted by China. If, on the other hand, you believed strongly in international cooperation, were opposed to President Trump, and sympathetic to the WHO’s mission, you may be quicker to forgive the organization for praising Beijing’s transparency.

Indeed, this divide emerged again and again as I asked global health experts, politicians, and advocates their opinion of the WHO response in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, this ideological split is to be expected among the general public. But that it persists among experts and policymakers to the degree that it does reflects a lack of direction that may forestall any attempt to meaningfully reform America’s relationship with an enormously consequential international institution.

CCP Misdeeds  

China, we now know, lied brazenly in an attempt to preserve its reputation on the world stage at the expense of global health. Beijing concealed evidence of human-to-human transmission for weeks after its own scientists became aware of it; refused to provide live virus samples to researchers in other countries for weeks after they were identified, delaying the development of a vaccine; and resisted limits on travel and trade for weeks after it understood the seriousness of the threat posed by the virus.

In the wake of the SARS outbreak of 2003, the WHO adopted a new set of rules known as the International Health Regulations (IHR), which require, among other things, that member states immediately disclose threats to public health as soon as they are discovered. According to much of the congressional Republican caucus and many observers in the press, CCP officials clearly violated their reporting duty when they failed to inform the WHO that they had uncovered clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.

[Interesting Read]