The WHO has once again ignored Taiwan’s repeated requests to be invited to the World Health Assembly (WHA) this year in Geneva. Once again signaling that the “World Health Organization” is anything but.
The World Health Assembly is scheduled to begin tomorrow, May 22nd and last until the 28th. Once again Taiwan has not been invited to the meeting. This is due to China’s insistence that Taiwan not be invited because they view Taiwan, erroneously, as part of its territory, and Taiwan has refused to acquiesce.
Thus the WHO has once again shown that it will absolutely put money and politics over public health, though that should have been obvious by the way that they have handled the COVID pandemic.
Instead of adhering to tried and true methods of dealing with a novel virus, like quarantining, testing, locking down of the borders, the WHO has largely taken a hands off approach and allowed countries to let the virus run wild and mutate at its leisure, with devastating consequences.
The ongoing pandemic has now killed well over 6 million people, though this is likely a serious underestimate. There have also been countless scores that have been beset with chronic illness due to the COVID pandemic including long COVID, myocarditis, possibly liver failure in many young children, and much more.
The ruling DPP have called this out for what it is, rank partisanship, however this is unlikely to move the needle as the WHO seems immune to hypocrisy burns.
Former KMT president, Ma Ying-jeou, famous for his attempts to make sweetheart deals with China under the cover of night (that were thankfully nixed due to the brave Sunflower Movement), has now come out to give his opinion.
Ma stated that under his administration Taiwan was allowed to participate in the WHA. This is of course because Ma was a good little boy and was willing to kowtow to China (as mentioned before with his attempted economic deal with the CCP).
The Tsai administration is far from perfect (see their weak labor reforms, refusal to do anything serious about housing prices, recent COVID policies, and I could go on), however the ruling party has taken a tough line on China. Directly refuting the obviously incorrect assertions that Taiwan is, or has ever been, part of the PRC.
This, of course, doesn’t sit well with China, and thus they have used their international clout to continue to block Taiwan from joining the paramount world health summit. Again, this clearly shows that the WHO is, and likely will continue to, put politics over public health.
As long as they continue to do this, they should be ridiculed and viewed with a very large degree of skepticism. If they cannot put health above international dick measuring contests in this situation, why would we trust them to do so in other areas?
This is not to say that nothing the WHO says should be trusted, that would be as asinine as saying everything that China says is incorrect (even if they say the sky is blue, water is wet, and the pope wears a funny hat). However, it does mean, like good little scientists, we should scour over research and look at what is said with skepticism, we should focus on the data (though honestly this should always be people’s MO).
People need to stop blindly trusting institution (I know this should go without saying). Though, we must at the same time insure that all have access to these institution, especially those that are so often marginalized by those in power, in order to help add to the conversation and hopefully reform these institutions into entities that actually fulfill the purpose that they claim to strive for.