The Coronavirus, currently spreading like a desease not only through various countries but at times also through some of the mainstream media, has left many infected it seems. Not only with coughing, fever and, sadly, in thousands of cases with death - so far not unsimilar to a dangerous end-of-winter flu wave - but also with a certain form of mental blindness, it seems.
Many are still not familiar with the current leaders' past of one the most important world health organisation called upon to coordinate the global efforts to combat the deadly Coronavirus COVID-19: the World Health Organisation, or WHO, of the United Nations.
The WHO's current Director General is
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian born politician who
was nominated to lead the global health organisation on July 1, 2017. Shortly before aiming to take the WHO's lead role, Tedros Adhanom was accused of
covering up deadly epidemics in Ethiopia during his tenure as the country's health minister. Ghebreyesus's Health Department refused to call Ethiopia's cholera epidemic more than 10 years ago as such, he was instrumental in
classifying the disease in 2007 as "acute watery diarrhea". His health department held back laboratory results from the public for almost a year.
Around three month after taking the post as WHO's Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also welcomed President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe as a so-called "good-will" ambassador to the WHO.
I am honoured to be joined by President Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the centre of its policies to provide health care to all. Today I am also honoured to announce that President Mugabe has agreed to serve as a goodwill ambassador on NCDs for Africa to influence his peers in his region to prioritize NCDs. (Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
at WHO Global Conference in Montevideo, Uruguay on October 18, 2017)
Sanctioned by the US and other nations for many brutal human rights violations committed by his government, Mugabe was lauded by Ghebreyesus, calling the dictator's country Zimbabwe "a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the centre of its policies to provide health care to all."
Adhanom himself was a top member of the so-called 'Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF)', a
brutal marxist political group responsible for many human rights violations and crimes against humanity in his home country Ethiopia. The group was classified as a terrorist organisation in the US Homeland Security
Global Terrorism Database:
The TPLF is a political group founded in 1975 in Ethiopia, as an opposition group. The TPLF engaged in prolonged armed conflict with the government of Ethiopia, which, along with other groups, it succeeded in overthrowing in 1991. The TPLF then joined the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a political coalition that became the governing coalition in Ethiopia. The EPRDF continues to control the government of Ethiopia. The TPLF qualifies as a Tier III terrorist organization under INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III) on the basis of its violent activities before it became part of the ruling coalition and the government of Ethiopia in May 1991. (US Department of Homeland Security
Policy Memorandum dated June 15, 2014)
Press reports from Ethiopia also confirmed the US Department of Homeland Security's findings:
The [TPLF] gang is ultimately responsible for all the corruption, killings, torture, mass detention, land grab or displacement. Adhanom is among the top three within the gang. He was very close to the late dictator Meles Zenawi, who trusted him to be a confidant as well as a cabinet minister. But the numbers Adhanom is throwing to foreign journalists and diplomats are not about those who were murdered and tortured by the TPLF. (
Ethiopian Registrar)
The WHO and a few West African nations
were collectively criticised also around four years ago during a deadly Ebola outbreak:
The most egregious failure was by WHO in the delay in sounding the alarm, people at WHO were aware that there was an Ebola outbreak that was getting out of control by spring ... and yet it took until August to declare a public health emergency. The cost of the delay was enormous. (Prof Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute)
In addition, the WHO came also under scrutiny in the past for its connection to the pharma industry.
Various scandals surrounding vaccines for the 2009 H1N1 virus and SARS put individuals in the spotlight who profited from epidemics, also at the WHO.
For the corona virus in 2020, the
WHO did not hesitate to report in a not unsimilar way that "preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities
found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China" on January 14, 2020, when hundreds had already died from the virus. In addition, at least two Chinese doctors who went public with their findings about the virus
had disappeared, all while WHO Director Adhanom praised the efforts as "China's extraordinary measures it has taken to control the outbreak":
As I have said repeatedly since my return from Beijing, the Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak, despite the severe social and economic impact those measures are having on the Chinese people...The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome, and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries. (WHO Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
at press briefing on January 30, 2020, page 2)
On February 4, 2020, Dr. Tedros Adhanom stated at another press briefing that the overwhelming majority of corona virus cases are in China and hence that there would be "no reason to panic or fear". He also mentioned that the world would still have "a window of opportunity":
99% [of corona virus cases] are in China, in the rest of the world we only have 176 cases. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't get worse, but for sure we have a window of opportunity to act because 176 in the rest of the world is very small. There is no reason to panic or fear ... so let's use this opportunity to prevent further spread and to control it. Let's not miss this window of opportunity. (WHO Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
at press briefing on February 4, 2020, page 3)
Exactly one week later, on February 11, 2020, the WHO released a report regarding travel considerations with the following sentences:
Following that determination [from January 30, 2020], WHO did not recommend any travel or trade restrictions, based on the current information available. Evidence on travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic for more than 24 hours shows that such measures may have a public health rationale at the beginning of the containment phase of an outbreak, as they may allow affected countries to implement sustained response measures, and non-affected countries to gain time to initiate and implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions, however, need to be short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves. (
WHO Report "Key considerations for repatriation and quarantine of travellers" from February 11, 2020, page 1)
Seems like as if some people also at the WHO wanted to have that "window of opportunity" mentioned only a few days earlier closed rather quickly. Worth mentioning is that the global political elites' annual meeting at Munich's Security Conference in Germany
started only 3 days later on February 14, 2020. Munich was also visited by the Director General of the WHO during that timeframe, according to the WHO itself. Adhanom not only made a visit to the "Security Conference" there, but also gave a speech there on February 15, 2020, two weeks after (!) the US President had already at least officially banned all Chinese people from traveling to the United States.
The Director-General spoke at the Munich Security Conference, a global forum dedicated to issues of international security, including health security, where he also held several bilateral meetings. In his speech, the Director-General made three requests of the international community: use the window of opportunity to intensify preparedness, adopt a whole-of-government approach and be guided by solidarity, not stigma. He also expressed concern at the global lack of urgency in funding the response. (
Entry under February 15, 2020 in WHO report
"Timeline of WHO's response to COVID-19")
The virus outbreak itself ignited massively on or after February 20, 2020 first in Italy and South Korea, and spread to New York and to the US West Coast as well from there, mainly because of air travel - maybe also by people travelling from Munich.
An extremely contagious media virus related to COVID-19 that is affecting Germany in particular was exposed in mid March of 2020, when one of the most distributed Sunday newspaper, the "Welt am Sonntag", published a story about a German Biotech company
on its front page which cited this among other:
The US president allegedly offers the German company a high amount to secure their work. Word is in Berlin that it is about 1 billion USD. Especially problematic is: Trump is doing anything to get a vaccine for the US. "But only for the US", it is explained by the German government. (
Front page article in 'Welt am Sonntag' dated March 15, 2020)
CureVac's CEO Daniel Minichella was invited in the week before to participate in a task force meeting at the White House in Washington, DC with other pharma industry leaders. Soon after, the "Welt am Sonntag" reported in
their story dated March 15, 2020 that the US government had offered billions to the German CEO to purchase pontential vaccine rights in order to keep medications exclusively to the US. The viral report was immediatey debunked as fake news, even the US ambassador to Germany
clearified the issue by stating that no such offer was ever given to CureVac, and that the US works with others to create a vaccine for the entire world. CureVac itself rejected the claims as well:
To make it clear again on coronavirus: CureVac has not received from the US government or related entities an offer before, during and since the Task Force meeting in the White House on March 2. CureVac rejects all allegations from press. (CureVac
tweet from March 16, 2020)
A similar ridiculous fake news story
had to be retracted in the early days of April 2020 as well, when some news outlets accused the US government of "piracy" and allegedly having robbed thousands of face masks on a Chinese tarmac in a shipment allegedly purchased and destined to a German police station.
Meanwhile, the German government is getting criticised by a reporter from Italy who claims that their lax handling had contributed to a massive outbreak of the virus.
According to a report from Italy, scientists in Milan found that patient zero came from Munich. He or she had received the virus from a meeting with a person who flew in from Shanghai. The Munich individual distributed the virus days later during travels in Lombardia, North of Italy, according to the report.
Additionally, medical doctors in France and the US had found out that an anti-malaria medication named "Hydroxychloroquine" - known and around for decades - in combination with an antibiotica plus zinc was able to save smaller groups of corona virus infected patients
with up to a 99.9% success rate. The medication is currently not available in Germany, even if prescribed by a doctor, and had apparently been taken off the market months ago with perfect timing, it seems. A list of research papers and reports regarding Hydroxychloroquine
can be read here.
Interesting also that the numbers for corona virus affected people in Germany - and other nations as well - are being collected and distributed by the Johns Hopkins University in the US, rather than by the German government itself. An article on above mentioned "Welt" from March 25, 2020 states the following:
The Johns Hopkins University is citing the Dutch news agency BNO News in Tilburg as the source of its German figures, which refers to figures from the “Berliner Morgenpost” [Berlin Daily Mail]. (
'Die Welt' from March 25, 2020)
Important to mention are also
numbers of the German governmental 'Statistisches Bundesamt' organisation for reasons of around 1 million German mortalities in 2017, a year that did not experience a special virus pandemic:
Worth mentioning is also a timeline of important WHO statements from January until March 2020 and corresponding political events:
Despite all this and in an extraordinarily interesting way, Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted this message on April 15, 2020:
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This article was entirely created and written by Martin D., an accredited and independent, investigative journalist from Europe. He holds an MBA from a US University and a Bachelor Degree in Information Systems and had worked early in his career as a consultant in the US and EU. He does not work for, does not consult, does not own shares in or receives funding from any corporation or organisation that would benefit from this article so far.
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