Nobody can honestly say that World
Health Organization did a good job in detecting this virus and declaring a
necessary declaration of a global emergency? They deferred that pronouncement a
month to keep from embarrassing China. They were flattering to China’s later
containment efforts, perhaps too effusively. They were also hamstrung because
Taiwan is not allowed to be a member (the People’s Republic of China has ousted
them from all UN activities, with full US support, beginning in the Nixon era).
Donald Trump’s announcement, however, that pending a more detailed
investigation, he is suspending financial support for the United Nation’s WHO
may have serious negative consequences for all of us. In spite of the fact that
several federal agencies are also digging into potential false statements from
China that may have triggered this inadequate WHO response.
All things China are now toxic here.
We have escalating the rhetoric of blame against the PRC, and they have
reciprocated in kind. “Public anger, and the Chinese Communist Party’s massive
response to fight the epidemic, has strengthened Xi’s grip on power and made it
easier for him to pursue a crackdown on dissent.
“Many in China chafe at Trump’s
effort to blame them for the pandemic as both unfair and factually wrong. They
see China, with its isolation of Hubei province and other hot spots, as a model
for how to contain and conquer the disease. Many also see China as having
reached out to help other countries as its own crisis has abated.
“There’s a narrative widely accepted
within China that the country has been able to bring the virus under control
and ‘that China is — if not the savior of the world — at least sort of doing
more than its fair share to help the rest of the world,’ said David Bachman, a
China specialist at the University of Washington in Seattle… The COVID-19
pandemic, in an unexpected but potentially fateful twist, has moved the United
States and China a big step closer to a new cold war.
“It has strengthened hard-liners in
both countries, and political pressures stemming from the pandemic are making
it harder for leaders to back away from escalation… For Trump, the antagonism
with China has centered on trade. He has led a tit-for-tat tariff war with
China, eroding what for many years had been seen as the ballast in the
relationship.
“In January, there was a glimmer of
hope that tensions might ease: The two sides struck a large [phase one] trade
deal in which the Chinese promised to buy billions of dollars more in American
farm products and other goods… But ‘the trade deal signed in January is already
dead in the water,’ said Bachman. ‘There’s no possible way that the targets now
are going to be met. And so that’s going to be a source of dissatisfaction on
the U.S. side.’… What’s more, the pandemic exposed America’s heavy dependence
on China for critical medical supplies and drugs, as well as many other
manufactured products.” Don Lee writing for the April 15th Los
Angeles Times. Brick by brick, the Trump administration is tearing away at
governmental policies and agencies that would normally have kicked into gear
long before they did to stem pandemic disaster.
Having disbanded the federal group
created to prevent and predict pandemics (White House National Security
Agency’s Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense) early in his
administration, peppered the American people with false palliatives plus piles
of disinformation for months and shirked personal leadership responsibility, Donald
Trump’s own delays and denials appear to have had even greater negative impact
on Americans than anything WHO might have done. Adding another round of
defunding to agencies, in this case the United Nations WHO, charged with
pandemic responsibility – notwithstanding culpability – only makes a bad
situation that much worse.
WHO pretty much knows it screwed up. Its Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, should resign or be removed from office, but defunding WHO in the
middle of a global pandemic – particularly after a recent spate of powerful
pandemics/epidemics (COVID-19,
SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, Zika, H1N1, cholera) – may play well with
Trump’s anti-globalist base, but in terms of dealing with what we are facing
now, it is sheer madness. WHO is obviously dealing with and repairing its own
short-comings. We need every bit of global cooperation we can get. Trump’s bad
habit of playing the COVI-19 as a political event, versus medical emergency,
will only kill more people than his fostering delayed required measures already
has.
But the sheer hypocrisy of lambasting
and defunding an international pandemic-fixing authority, given what our own
government has done, is staggering. We all know the headlines based on federal
governmental failures and the exacerbation inflicted on future victims by
governors unwilling to take individual responsibility for their own states
simply to follow the misdirection of a clearly flawed Trump-led federal
response strategy. But some of even the harshest critics of the administration
might also have missed back page reports of how the United States is actually
helping to spread COVID-19 to other countries. Under the guise of “immigration”
reform.
The huddled masses aggregating below
our southern border waiting for the right to apply are living in unsanitary
conditions where the virus spreads easily with little or no treatment options.
Immigration detention facilities on this side of the border have become
breeding grounds for COVID-19, and as we implement deportation of many of these
detainees back to their home countries, we a knowingly sending coronavirus with
them.
“More than half the deportees flown
back to Guatemala by U.S. immigration authorities have tested positive for
coronavirus, the top Guatemalan health official said Tuesday [4/14]… Speaking
to reporters in Guatemala City, Hugo Monroy, the minister of health, did not
specify a time frame or the total number of deportees who had arrived home with
infections.
“But hundreds of Guatemalans have
been returned in recent weeks, including 182 who arrived Monday [4/13] on two
flights from Texas… Monroy said that on one flight — which he declined to
identify — more than 75% of the deportees tested positive… But he made clear
this was not an isolated incident and said many deportees arrived with fevers
and coughs and were immediately tested… ‘We’re not just talking about one
flight,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about all the flights.’…
“For the first time under the modern
immigration system, the mass removals include unaccompanied minors and asylum
seekers, two groups specially protected under U.S. law… In the first week of
April alone, Guatemala received about 100 unaccompanied minors expelled from
the United States — as many as it took in during all of March… On March 30,
Guatemalan Vice President Guillermo Castillo ‘begged’ the U.S. to stop
deportation flights to Guatemala, according to an interview with a local radio
station. The flights were paused again for a week but restarted Monday [4/13].”
Patrick J. McDonnell, Molly O’Toole and Cindy Carcamo writing for the Los
Angeles Times, April 15th.
Treaties, multinational agreements,
the law and the Constitution are taking hits during these perilous times. The
President is declaring that he has peremptory powers reflecting near unchecked
total power over every aspect of this pandemic, despite not a shred of
supporting legislation or Constitutional authority. Including the ability to
issue executive orders without question or to abrogate federal statutes without
Congressional approval.
The President’s policies have helped
spread infection far and wide, even to his own federal employees. “In the
United States, at least 21 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees
working at migrant detention centers have tested positive for COVID-19,
according to the agency… That includes 13 at the Alexandria, La., staging
facility that has been sending deportation flights to Guatemala and other countries.
“An additional 80 ICE employees who
work outside of detention have also tested positive. The agency has refused to
provide a count for the number of cases among thousands of contractors and
personnel at private facilities that contract with the federal government to
hold migrants.
“The agency has been engaged in an
ongoing review to determine which migrants are most ‘vulnerable’ and able to be
released from custody as the virus spreads through its detention facilities.
Only recently has it begun to test more broadly at facilities that have
confirmed cases.
“Because of the pandemic, Guatemala
is refusing to accept deportees who are not Guatemalan, putting on hold a deal
it made with the U.S. last year. Under that arrangement, Guatemala had accepted
some 900 Salvadorans and Hondurans who had been denied the opportunity to seek
asylum in the U.S.
“As for Guatemalan deportees,
officials said the first to test positive for COVID-19 was an adult male who
arrived March 26 from Mesa, Ariz… A few minors have arrived with fevers, though
U.S. immigration authorities have said that all passengers’ temperatures are
taken before boarding and that no one is allowed to make the flight to
Guatemala, or anywhere else, with a fever. [Federal administrative agencies,
run by political appointees, don’t have much credibility these days.]
“On Friday [4/10], the White House
threatened visa sanctions against any country that does not accept its citizens
who are deported from the United States amid the pandemic — a move widely seen
as directed at Central America, the biggest source of migrants arriving at the
U.S. southern border.
“On Monday [4/13], U.S. Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo said he had notified Congress that the Trump administration
would continue ‘targeted assistance’ to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,
citing their continued cooperation on immigration and the asylum deals. Since
January, the U.S. government has deported more than 11,758 Guatemalans.
“Since March 20, when the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention issued an order blocking travelers from Canada
and Mexico regardless of country of origin, U.S. officials have expelled nearly
11,000 migrants with minimal processing.” LA Times. Until the November
election, we cannot defund Trump’s failed efforts or fire him for his
misdirection. As he evokes “rally round the flag” support, he is generating
undeserved popular support which just could propel his reelection and place this
nation into a death-spiral toward internal conflict that we have not seen since
the Civil War.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and we really need to reverse those who believe in “listen to what
we say, don’t look at what we do,” a mantra that has only encouraged Donald
Trump to be the autocrat he wants to be.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment