US Will Not Pay Millions In Dues To WHO This Year (thehill.com) 186
The Trump administration will decline to pay tens of millions of dollars owed to the World Health Organization (WHO) in annual dues as part of the U.S.'s withdrawal from the global body, which is scheduled for next year. The Hill reports: The Associated Press reported that the U.S. will not pay just over $60 million owed in 2020 dues to the organization, and Reuters reported that the decision also will affect about $19 million still owed in 2019 dues. A decision to forgo the payments comes as the Trump administration has hammered the WHO for months over supposedly bowing to China's wishes and essentially acting as a PR shop for China's government during the early stages of the pandemic while Chinese officials allegedly stymied international health experts from learning about the virus.
In a statement, a WHO spokesperson said the agency would review its options and encourage the U.S. to reverse course. "We refer you to our previous statements of regret regarding the U.S. decision to withdraw. We await further details, which we will consider carefully," the spokesperson told Reuters.
In a statement, a WHO spokesperson said the agency would review its options and encourage the U.S. to reverse course. "We refer you to our previous statements of regret regarding the U.S. decision to withdraw. We await further details, which we will consider carefully," the spokesperson told Reuters.
Isolate America First! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Isolate America First! (Score:5, Insightful)
Break off all diplomatic ties with every other country but Russia. : P
I am assuming everyone is just going to wait until election outcome before they do anything.
If Biden wins, none of this matters.
If Trump wins, we will have bigger problems.
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What makes you think Trump will not win? In other words, what looks different from Trump's campaign 4 years ago? From my POV, the campaigns looks disturbingly similar. So I will not be surprised if Trumps wins again.
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What makes you think Trump will not win? In other words, what looks different from Trump's campaign 4 years ago? From my POV, the campaigns looks disturbingly similar. So I will not be surprised if Trumps wins again.
You are putting words in his mouth. He said 'if Trump wins' ... So to put some words in your mouth, what makes you think Trump is guaranteed to win?
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What makes you think Trump will not win? In other words, what looks different from Trump's campaign 4 years ago? From my POV, the campaigns looks disturbingly similar. So I will not be surprised if Trumps wins again.
Especially as he's encouraging voter fraud in his favour.
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It's worse than that. He's denigrating voting by mail with the idea being that come election night, if he starts out leading in the battleground states, he'll declare victory before the mail-in votes are counted. When they are counted and it turns out he's losing, he'll then claim the election is being stolen from him. The Republican Eunuchs will fall right in step with him.
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It's worse than that. He's denigrating voting by mail
It's even worse than that. He repeatedly denigrates members of the military at all levels, even claiming he knows more about the military than the people serving because he went to a military school [9cache.com]. He has also slurred those who died or were captured as losers [theatlantic.com], even berating a Gold Star family [cnn.com].
That's all a failure like him can do, try to bring people down to his level rather than raise people up.
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I honestly wonder what effect the negativity and constant lies has had on the American Psyche, is half the country not in a permanent state of cognitive dissonance? Sure politicians lie but Trump is a Tsunami of lies.
Trump could easily win again, the polls are too close.
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The alleged president's core unit of base supporters has decreased 4% since the last election. I think it was on NPR's web site.
Re: Isolate America First! (Score:2)
We have to take the attitude that anyone who does not vote is essentially voting for Trump. The idea being that anyone who would have voted against Trump and does not vote essentially gives more strength to those who do vote for Trump, because they will vote.
Re:Isolate America First! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is one HUGE difference between the 2016 election and the 2020 election. Trump now has a record that he as to run against. In 2016 he could promise anything he wanted and people had to take his word that he would be able to accomplish what he promised. This year we know what Trump can/can't do in office. You may think that what he has done in the last 3+ years live up to his promises or you may think they don't but now you have some history to judge him by (in 2016 you didn't).
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Why do you think the Democrats are shilling so hard for mail-in voting? The virus? But they tell us masks work, wear the mask, why won't masks work when voting?
If find it odd that so many people are unable to understand the idea of a continuum. Like the idiot AC above, they want things to be black and white, masks either work perfectly or they don't work at all.
Unfortunately for them, reality isn't as simple as their minds.
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If COVID-19 has taught me anything, it's that nobody argues in good faith. There are no ethics, no principle, no morals, just people who want what they want, and damn everything and everybody else.
This is something many people learn from politics today, but it is very wrong and incredibly dangerous. It leads to the false equivalence bias which is causing significant damage to our country already. Making people think this way is the most powerful voter suppression technique being deployed today. If everyone lies then why participate in elections at all?
Everyone has ethics, principles, and morals. Even sociopaths have some level of these traits. All people have biases which cause them to argue poorly,
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So it doesn't matter that the EPA has decided to loosen mercury emissions from coal fired power plants? Or that the alleged president wants to walk away from NATO since defense treaties are in his eyes are protection rackets? Or that he's Putin's poodle because the Russians certainly have the U.S. interests in heart? Or that he routinely supports right-wing nut wannabee dictators in democracies?
Democracy is anathema to the alleged president. It has a lot of adult supervision and that's the one thing he cann
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It’s a shame that, judging by the communication style of your post, you didn’t attend a first world school....
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"Break off all diplomatic ties..." ...with Pete Townshend?
I told him, he said he won't get fooled again.
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Said by the Canadian who hasn't YET lost a lot of the Arctic to Russia.
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Slashdot has this oddly weird obsession with lands south of Canucklandia. USA makes up barely 5% of the world's population and with Trump's isolationism, who the fudge cares what this pariah nation thinks?
Sorry, yanks, we're just not into you.
Any country or their citizens who are not significantly interested in what is going on in the US are being quite foolish. It isn't much different than anyone ignoring China or Russia or large EU nations, although out of all these the US still holds the most power on the world stage. The US has the world's strongest economy and strongest military, as well as control over the world's largest reserve currency. The US is also among the world's greatest polluters.
While it is silly to feel the rest of the world s
Re: Isolate America First! (Score:2)
Is that like the Great Mutato?
Gates Foundation (Score:4, Interesting)
The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation should just step up to the plate and replace the US government's annual funding.
- The foundation could *easily* afford this. It is a fraction of their annual budget.
- It aligns entirely with the mission of the foundation
- It would be a nice slap in the face for Trump & his backers.
Re: Gates Foundation (Score:3, Funny)
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Hardly, Melinda never does 69.
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Original research, sorry.
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why are we allowing social services to be hollowed out and replaced by the fickle and inadequate largess of billionaires
that's not what billionaires are for
that's what government is for
Re: Gates Foundation (Score:3, Interesting)
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Exactly. It's like Billionaires are our new feudal overlords. Governments bow down to them - are puppets for them. The fall of Western civilization is upon us.
New?
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Exactly. It's like Billionaires are our new feudal overlords. Governments bow down to them - are puppets for them. The fall of Western civilization is upon us.
New?
Yeah, the USA is a Corporatocracy [wikipedia.org] and has been for a long time.
Re: Gates Foundation (Score:5, Interesting)
The US abolished lords, barons, and all other kinds of hereditary titles and even went so far as to consider an amendment to strip citizenship from anyone accepting foreign titles. The US then reinvented the whole system with entrenched wealth and financial oppression of workers, whist somehow convincing those same workers that they are actually free.
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Wealth is hereditary. Power is hereditary.
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Perhaps it's more accurate to say poverty is hereditary. Though I think even today, America has a lot more rags-to-riches stories than most other developed nations (see graphic [howmuch.net]).
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Because when the government does it it collect taxes and we have fewer billionaires. And billionaires, especially the ones that got their billions from racketeering and extortion, don't like that.
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The US will certainly be replaced.
By whom remains to be seen.
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The US will certainly be replaced.
By whom remains to be seen.
By China most likely but for all their faults and stupidities I'd rather have the US as a hegemon than China.
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Sorta. The point of the foundation is to keep the big pool of money invested, then spend the income from it (as a charity so you get the tax benefits too, provided you don't touch the money for other purposes). If you spend the principal then the foundation starts to dry up, and you can't keep this going indefinitely. So they could cover WHO dues for a year, but they couldn't keep doing this every year.
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The gates foundation has an endowment of over 50 billion dollars. It earns over 4 billion dollars / year on it's investments alone.
60 million dollars / year is quite literally pocket change for them.
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Why the hell would a private individual and his foundation have to pay a nation's contributions to an international UNO organization?
Private people are supposed to do...private stuff. Not fund international organizations that control aspects of billions of lives with their slush fund.
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They are already the largest funder and they have considerable control over the organisation.
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- The foundation could *easily* afford this. It is a fraction of their annual budget.
Lots of people could easily afford this. But why should the USA get a free pass because a manbaby threw a temper tantrum? They should at least pay for the period of the year for which they were members of the WHO?
But then it's not surprise to me that a guy who fires people for looking at him funny, who ran multiple businesses into the ground, and couldn't even make a casino profitable doesn't know what the term "contractual obligation" means.
- It would be a nice slap in the face for Trump & his backers.
No it really fucking wouldn't. Imagine your boss stopped paying yo
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The USA would not be getting a "free pass". The Gates Foundation would basically get the USA's seat at the table, which is overall a good thing as their decisions won't be politicized.
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And good old Trump gets vindicated for his manbaby tantrum, great success, hey everyone look how financially responsible I am. It's proof that the WHO should never have been funded by us in the first place. Those stupid democrats who signed us up (probably not correct but he'll say it anyway) are just wasting more of your money that could be better spent building a wall!
Make no mistake, the USA having any kind of "seat at the table" in any form, be it private, public, or a rich philanthropist is very much g
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Username checks out.
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
... what about the 2 trillion that the Fed pumped into Wall St. over the last 18 months? Or FFS the Pentagon budget?
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... what about the 2 trillion that the Fed pumped into Wall St. over the last 18 months? Or FFS the Pentagon budget?
So your best argument for funding the WHO is that we spend money on other things that are even stupider?
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Well, it's a prioritization argument.
If you cut the huge spending, you need not worry about the little spending anymore.
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It does not fit the definition of whataboutism.
Whataboutism is, in a nutshell:
A accuses B of X
B accuses A of Y as a counterargument.
where B is using whataboutism.
Current situation is
A praises C of X
B accuses C of Y
While C is the common object of the argument, it does not fall under the definition of whataboutism, because C could do both something good and something else bad. The argument helps define C's level of goodness (or evilness, where applicable).
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WHO dues are indeed a pittance. But the big powers that be would rather cut off this pittance and appeal to a certain voter base, than to cut off the giant flow of money that would anger that voter base. So, keep over-funding the military, keep giving huge tax cuts, and make very very tiny cuts in spending. It's not their problem, it's our children's problem, so max out those government credit cards!
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WHO dues are indeed a pittance. But the big powers that be would rather cut off this pittance and appeal to a certain voter base, than to cut off the giant flow of money that would anger that voter base. So, keep over-funding the military, keep giving huge tax cuts, and make very very tiny cuts in spending. It's not their problem, it's our children's problem, so max out those government credit cards!
Don't forget the bribes -- I mean, bailouts -- I mean "economic relief" -- to farmers and other sectors, that US taxpayers ultimately pay, to offset losses due to the trade war this Administration started and the tariffs on Chinese and other foreign goods, that the US consumers *also* ultimately pay, 'cause "trade wars are good, and easy to win" (that's a direct quote from the President).
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U.S. debt is northward of $22 Trillion. The total amount of fees the alleged president is withholding are in the tens of millions.
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Totally agree that private interests should fund the WHO. Please stop burdening my children with national debt to fund the WHO.
Why? The output of their efforts go directly to governments for government benefits. Do you think someone else should buy food that you eat as well? How did you grow up that entitled?
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If you're their father, why didn't you set them up?
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
Why? I would rather see the B&MG foundation start their own replacement to the WHO.
The WHO is a very very special thing. Every recognised country in the world has a relationship with the WHO and fundamentally trusts them. This means that the WHO hears about disease that no other organisation reliably can. This means that, whilst it's actions are limited, in fact because it's actions are limited, it can act when no other organisation can.
The understanding that the WHO does what governments want them to do with the data that governments give them - what Trump sees as "corruption" with regard to China - is actually what makes this so valuable. It's the whole point. Governments can tell the WHO things - the WHO can compare around different countries and then give feedback if they think there's a problem. If the WHO worked differently, the governments would simply not give that information. There are plenty of other organisations (USAID / Oxfam / Doctors Without Borders etc. etc.) that work without this government connection already. They are nowhere near as effective.
Giving his money to the WHO, which he already does [who.int], Gates might be able to create much more change and value than he ever could with his own organisation.
The only thing is that Gates should not donate in the name of the US government. There's no reason to pay of that liability and it should remain as a debt that the US has to pay in any case having agreed to it and benefited from membership.
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That trust has been affected by the WHO playing parrot to China.
Well of course it has been affected. All actions the WHO has every taken has had some effect on the trust given to the organization. But the trust given to the WHO by those who understand the organization's role is not measurably different. I would list out the reasons why but AleRunner already did a sufficient job of that.
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That trust has been affected by the WHO playing parrot to China.
All the stuff people have said about 45 fucking up the Covid response and not wanting to pay debts already accrued is true, but that is also true.
Let's look at how that trust has been affected
We've forgotten our role (Score:4, Interesting)
If American enemies are looking for an historical opening, this is that. We've perhaps undesrevedly kept the Republic longer than we might've deserved.
"We've given you a Republic."
The Republic was but political theory until the ugly Americans actually pulled it off:
While today we marvel at the extraordinary accomplishment of our Founding Fathers, their own reaction to the US Constitution when it was presented to them for their signatures was considerably less enthusiastic. Benjamin Franklin, ever the optimist even at the age of 81, gave what was for him a remarkably restrained assessment in his final speech before the Constitutional Convention: "when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." He thought it impossible to expect a "perfect production" from such a gathering, but he believed that the Constitution they had just drafted, "with all its faults," was better than any alternative that was likely to emerge. Nearly all of the delegates harbored objections, but persuaded by Franklin's logic, they put aside their misgivings and affixed their signatures to it. Their over-riding concern was the tendency in nearly all parts of the young country toward disorder and disintegration. Americans had used the doctrine of popular sovereignty--"democracy"--as the rationale for their successful rebellion against English authority in 1776. But they had not yet worked out fully the question that has plagued all nations aspiring to democratic government ever since: how to implement principles of popular majority rule while at the same time preserving stable governments that protect the rights and liberties of all citizens.
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The Republic was but political theory until the ugly Americans actually pulled it off
There were plenty of republics before the US. In particular: Corsican Republic established in 1755 had universal suffrage, Novgorod region in Russia had had universal elections since 1136 up until its fall in 1478 (still longer than the US history!), India had several democracies throughout its history, etc.
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In true Trump fashion (Score:5, Informative)
In true Trump fashion, he is refusing to pay for debt has already has accrued. I think it is dumb to pull out of WHO, especially during a pandemic, but he is the president and can do it. But of course he is also refusing to pay dues owed not only for this year, but also for last year. So not only are we already falling behind in paying our bills, he is outright refusing to pay them even though we have not pulled out of WHO yet.
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This is classic mind game. He will pay. He is saying "I will not pay" and later on will claim "Ah, I'm such a nice guy, I will pay". This way he looks good from both sides.
Re:In true Trump fashion (Score:5, Insightful)
That "so many enemies" line is gross overstatement yet often repeated. The US has "so many countries concerned with its unilateral actions and interference in their operations."
Re:In true Trump fashion (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you can educate me on this.
Every source I can find explicitly says the WHO relies on voluntary contributions,
See [1], where it for instance says:
WHO’s Programme Budget is financed through a mix of assessed and voluntary contributions. Assessed contributions are the dues countries pay in order to be a member of the Organization. The amount each Member State must pay is calculated relative to the country's wealth and population.
The assessed contributions are the ones countries are obliged to pay. The United States has been a member of WHO, and still is in 2020, so it has an assessed contribution it's obliged to pay the WHO. See [2] for a tally how much of the assessed contributions that different countries have to pay, as well as if they have an outstanding debt from 2019.
From [2] and for the United States as I understand it (note: one column says "biennial assessment", so maybe a value is calculated for two years at a time):
For 2020: 57,883,460 USD + 59,099,013 CHF
For 2019: 41,284,915 USD + 40,029,258 CHF
Looking through [2], e.g. most european countries (i.e. except Montenegro, North Macedonia, Turkey) have paid their dues. And so has e.g Canada, China, Japan, Korea and Russia to name a few.
The United States sticks out from 1st world countried by not having paid. Especially since it also has the by far largest debt - seven times larger than the next closest country (Brazil).
As there's quite a bit of unpaid membership fee from 2019, I wonder if Trump already then were thinking of leaving the WHO, and therefore didn't want to pay for 2019.
[1] https://www.who.int/about/fina... [who.int]
[2] https://www.who.int/about/fina... [who.int]
PS.
On the topic of not paying membership fees, I suddenly realize it's quite hypocritical of Trump to complain about NATO countries not paying 2%. (Yes, I know the NATO members don't actually have that obligation, but let's assume this is what Trump thinks. If he knows it's not actually an obligation, he's just being even more hypocritical).
China will (Score:4, Insightful)
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Too late for that. The head of the WHO can't even say the name Taiwan for fear of retribution https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:China will (Score:4, Insightful)
so what? the WHO is just office of UN and doesn't do anything but push paper and compile reports.
The WHO directly funds organizations that are working on polio eradication right now. And I think that the WHO should just bill the US for damages that were caused by the CIA to the eradication effort in Afghanistan.
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so what? the WHO is just office of UN and doesn't do anything but push paper and compile reports. They don't have labs, they don't treat people. China has essentially contributed zero to the WHO while the USA props it up. We don't need it. Even our health aid and help to other countries isn't done through the WHO.
It's not a tragedy, get it through your skull. WHO is worthless as the UN.
Actually, as I just looked this up and wrote about it in comment above [2], according to [1], China has paid it's dues for 2020. And the "biennial assessment" for 2020 for China is: 28,719,905 USD + 29,323,023 CHF.
The corresponding numbers for the United States for 2020 (not paid) are: 57,883,460 USD + 59,099,013 CHF.
Then the United States has unpaid dues from before 2020: 41,284,915 USD + 40,029,258 CHF
[1] https://www.who.int/about/fina... [who.int]
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the world should put the Trumps on a persona non grata list, or Force Donals to sigh a sex offenders register..PUBLICLY.
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The rest of the world should put the Trumps on a persona non grata list
Rest assured most all world leaders make jokes behind his back with regularity and when he is no longer president the entire world minus his few hardcore supporters will breathe a sigh of relief.
Pocket change (Score:2)
pay what is owed (Score:5, Informative)
If the US owed the money, they should pay it. They need to be up-to-date when they quit the WHO. It is the right thing to do.
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Now pit Trump against "the right thing to do".
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So if you find one of your business partners is steeped in corruption and has been working for years against you, making sure you've paid him his back salary is "the right thing to do"?
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So if you find one of your business partners is steeped in corruption and has been working for years against you, making sure you've paid him his back salary is "the right thing to do"?
In Trump's worldview, paying anyone you can avoid paying, even if you have to make up stories about corruption, or if you're just pretty sure they can't force the issue, is only for losers and suckers (like idiots who join the military). It's been his modus operandi for decades, so I'm sure he sees no reason to change now.
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and has been working for years against you
What the fuck are you talking about?
The direction of WHO... (Score:2)
Even though I think we need something like WHO, I don't think it has done things too well with this pandemic. The biggest issue was to not limit travel to and from China at the early phases of the pandemic in order to not damage the economy. Sure, it's easier to be wiser in retrospect, and the SARS-CoV-1 didn't spread asymptomatically at least anywhere near the extent of SARS-CoV-2. But when it was not sure if there is asymptomatic spread or not, the right choice is to assume that there may be.
Now they are
Re:The direction of WHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
For those who did not attend secondary school:
The reason for not limiting travel early on is because, without massive public support for the limiting, the amount of undocumented travel across many relevant borders would have massively increased, leading to much faster and uncontrolled spreading. This was clearly explained at the time, though the attention span of the American news media meant that bit fell by the wayside.
I know Trumpets will never understand this, but most people should be able to grasp the idea that many boarders are much larger and more porous than USA/Mexico, and restricting legit crossings leads to people smuggling on a scale that would make the average Mexican gang leader's head would explode if he could only imagine it.
No one said the WHO was perfect. However, most people do not have unrealistic expectations of what they can do, and understands they are no where near as stupid and incompetent as the Trump government. In most of the world, the WHO has more credibility than the USA. China's credibility has always been at a low level. However, the USA is currently involved in a fight to the bottom in a race that China has no particular wish to win.
Regret instead of apology (Score:2)
Re: Replace the WHO, no more nefarious influences. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we eliminate coronavirus in our borders, we'll still have people spreading it after visiting other places in the world. If we don't vaccinate the "shit hole countries" then we'll be fighting the virus for the next 50 years. Don't be a chump, blast this thing hard in every cornerbof the globe and make the virus a distant memory for the next generation. Pay now or fuck it up pay a lot more later.
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Without a systematic plan to wipe out the viruses in each region, we'll just be throwing that money away. What you suggest is exactly how we're going to spend many trillions of dollars over the next 50 years on it.
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Vaccination of healthy people protects people who cannot take a vaccine. It's not optional, and we don't plan on letting you have a choice in it.
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Maybe when the vaccine has been proven safe beyond reasonable doubt. Right now there's too much political pressure to approve a vaccine before it's ready.
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Re: Replace the WHO, no more nefarious influences. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Replace the WHO, no more nefarious influences. (Score:5, Informative)
but that will fade as more get exposed.
The main avenue for a vaccine right now is based on research that shows most people don't produce antibodies that are effective in preventing infection. The vaccine intends to get you to finally produce those antibodies.
No vaccine, no immunity. We cannot reach herd immunity by natural means. Just like we didn't defeat polio or smallpox by sitting on our asses either, those were around throughout recorded human history until we defeated them in the modern era.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle. It's with us now, forever.
See previous paragraph.
The time to (potentially) stop it was likely in November, maybe December. Back when the WHO was covering it up.
If you've given up, then stay aside and let the real men and women roll up our sleeves and deal with this for you.
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@OrangeTide
"The main avenue for a vaccine right now is based on research that shows most people don't produce antibodies that are effective in preventing infection."
Source please?
I would like to read up on it.
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While essentially everyone infected produces some types of antibodies [nih.gov] (IgG and IgM), and this is incredibly useful for reliable testing, it is also the case that asymptomatic cases quickly lose those antibodies [www.cbc.ca], this makes vaccines critical if we wish to stop silent spreaders. Beyond building up a good IgG response in people, there is some interest in T cell response [news-medical.net] and how that may make a more effective vaccine [nbcnews.com].
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Thats what I thought.
I had read studies, but I wanted to see if there was something new I hadnt seen.
The problem isnt with the studies, but with the reporting. Though its mentioned in the article you linked, I think they havent put enough effort in making the point important.
Antibodies do not last, once infections are gone. For any disease. This is normal for all viruses.
Memory T cells, are what remain, and are more difficult to detect.
Generaly speaking, we developpe immunity to pretty much every virus we a
Re:If you're angry, you're forgetful. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know who also praised China's response to the Coronavirus? Donald Trump. Do you know who still to this day ignores expert advice on the Coronavirus? Donald Trump. Do you know who claimed that there would be no deaths at all in America and who downplayed the danger while claiming that those who sounded the alarm were perpetrating a hoax to make him look bad? Donald Trump. Who cared more about the stock exchange than the looming pandemic? Donald Trump.
And do you know which administration talks about the pandemic in the past tense and tries to force the schools and businesses to open even though it will cost more lives? Surely you can guess which one by now.
The WHO just reports what the information that its member states provide. It isn't supposed to be the health police putting that hard word on governments that it thinks are lying. They are not the corrupt organization that we should worry about. It is the Trump administration who needs to be kicked out if we want to save lives.
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This. Well spoken.
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Because it wishes to have oversized influence in those organizations.
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Exactly. When we give military and financial aid to corrupt countries around the world, we don't just know the elites will skim off the top, we rely on it, to buy favorable policies towards the US. We learned the hard way they will happily run off to the Soviets, in older days, or Russia or China today. If it will be corrupt anyway, might as well be oriented westward.
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Fuck people who just repeat the programming they received from fox news. Engage your brain instead.
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I no longer want to be a member of my cellphone company. Does that mean I don't have to see out the contract?
P.S. The rest of the planet does pay their agreed fair share. The US just wants us to pay more than the agreed fair share. Which, for the majority, we have done.
Legally speaking, EVERYONE is paying their agreed fair share. If you've been paying more than your agreed fair share, for no particular reason, maybe you should ask the person who's been paying that why.
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BTW, when is the rest of the planet going to pay its fair share for the U.N.?
When the US won't abuse it to fight out its oil wars.