India should not listen to WHO chief

India should see the World Health Organization (WHO) as a beacon—not of hope but of trap. Therefore, it should do exactly the opposite of what the WHO recommends. For WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is a congenital liar, a lickspittle of China’s who would go to any lengths to please his masters in Beijing.

The Chinese Communist Party wanted him to tell the world that the novel coronavirus was not dangerous; he did exactly that for a long time, thus letting it spread all over the world and kill over 1.8 lakh people. China wanted all countries to shut down so that it could send its merchandise to the entire world; Tedros’ WHO did that. Now Beijing wants the lockdown, wherever it is there, to prolong; so Tedros is now frightening everybody by saying that Covid-19 “will be with us for a long time.”

Besides, he is congratulating himself by claiming that the WHO’s lockdown advisory has helped the world: “There is no question that stay-at-home orders and other physical distancing measures have successfully suppressed transmission in many countries. But this virus remains extremely dangerous. Early evidence suggests most of the world’s population remains susceptible. That means epidemics can easily reignite. One of the greatest dangers we face now is complacency.” Lies galore.

The biggest danger to the world is undoubtedly Tedros, for he is not just majorly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people but also for destroying the credibility of the global health agency.

As I wrote on April 10 (<a href="https://indianarrative.com/health/india-did-better-by-not-trusting-who-615.html">https://indianarrative.com/health/india-did-better-by-not-trusting-who-615.html</a>), quoting a government official: “India has managed to keep the coronavirus cases and the death toll low primarily because it refused to accept the China-dictated version that the World Health Organization had been peddling till January.”

Till the middle of January, Tedros’ WHO was lulling the world into complacency. It infamously tweeted on January 14, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”

Thankfully, the Narendra Modi government was not fooled. The Health Ministry directed meetings of the Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) under the chairmanship of the Director General of Health Services on January 8 and 15. The meetings had representations from various stakeholders (health and non-health sectors) and the WHO.

However, the government erred in accepting the WHO’s recommendation of nationwide lockdown. The effect on the economy has been baneful and on the poor calamitous. The global economy too has been badly hit—practically dead in Europe and gasping for breath in the US.

This suits the Chinese perfectly: now they can sell their wares anywhere in any quantities for a very long period. As Tedros would put it “for a long time.”

It would be better for the Modi government to go back to its earlier stance—of distrusting the WHO. Accepting Tedros’ advice that the lockdown should be extended would be very bad for the economy, people, and national security of India. There are reports that defence acquisitions have been put on hold. China must be very happy.

Its lackey, Tedros, has been suggesting policies that would ruin the rest of the world. The lockdown measures, the WHO had warned a few days ago, “are the best way to suppress and stop transmission, so that when restrictions are lifted, the virus doesn’t resurge. The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses, only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence.”

In a nutshell, the lockdown must go, and go fast. For the sake of people, the economy, and national security..