Lancet Editor Calls Trump's WHO Funding Freeze a "Crime Against Humanity"

[babylonsister]

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/15/headlines/lancet_editor_calls_trumps_who_funding_freeze_a_crime_against_humanity?fbclid=IwAR1F3D3e_7G072YwhFkbN5xBNWe5yQiljcfuELye2dpuegnXvWdrII3lNyM

Lancet Editor Calls Trump’s WHO Funding Freeze a “Crime Against Humanity”
Apr 15, 2020


President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would cut off U.S. support for the World Health Organization — even as the death rate from the coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate, with worldwide confirmed deaths topping 127,000. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump sought to shift blame for his administration’s disastrous handling of the pandemic onto the United Nations public health agency, accusing the WHO of helping China to cover up the spread of the coronavirus when it emerged late last year.

President Donald Trump: “The world depends on the WHO to work with countries to ensure that accurate information about international health threats is shared in a timely manner and, if it’s not, to independently tell the world the truth about what is happening. The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable.”

Trump’s decision sparked international outrage and condemnation. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet medical journal, tweeted, “President Trump’s decision to defund WHO is simply this — a crime against humanity. Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”

[MontanaMama]

1. The MF's whole presidency is a crime against humanity.

Add it to the ever growing list.

[Alacritous Crier]

2. +1

[riversedge]

5. spot on!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Trump is like a city mayor who is dissatisfied with the fire department

and complains that they don't do a good enough job putting out fires. So instead of increasing their funding so they can hire more firefighters and buy more equipment, he decides to punish them by cutting their budget - so of course they will be even worse at putting out fires. Then he can blame them even more.

[malaise]

4. Here's another one -who protected these workers

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/nyregion/coronavirus-woodhull-madhvi-aya-dead.html

Lying in a hospital bed last month, Madhvi Aya understood what was happening to her.

She had been a doctor in India, then trained to become a physician assistant after she immigrated to the United States. She had worked for a dozen years at Woodhull Medical Center, a public hospital in Brooklyn, where she could see the coronavirus tearing a merciless path through the city.

Within days of her last shift as a caregiver, Ms. Aya became a patient. She had worked in Woodhull’s understaffed emergency room, taking medical histories, ordering tests and asking about symptoms. Now she had become infected.

Ms. Aya, 61, was alone in a hospital, less than two miles from her husband and 18-year-old daughter on Long Island, who could not visit her. She did not have the solace of familiar colleagues; she had been admitted to a different facility nearer her home. In a text with her family, she described horrible chest pain from trying to get out of bed.

“I have not improved the way should have been,” she wrote her husband, Raj, on March 23.

“I miss you mommy,” her daughter, Minnoli, wrote on March 25. She craved the reassurance of her mother’s hugs, the comfort of crawling into her bed. “Please don’t give up hope because I haven’t given up. I need my mommy. I need you to come back to me.”

“Love you,” Ms. Aya wrote the next day.

“Mom be back.”