Where do you get your info on COVID19?

I thought it was pretty common knowledge, the level of corruption at the WHO.  I would not take any information from them anymore.   Look at who is running it now....the UN should be dismantled.  I am very much in favor the US leaving the UN.  It would have such a shortage of money it would dry up or get efficient and improve.  As long as we pour money into it all we get is corruption, including their WHO.

Ah, well, we disagree somewhat.

I have no doubt that there would be some corruption in some parts of the WHO - because corruption is now everywhere - among all governments, courts, media, business, religion, charities - nothing is untouched by it. The tendency is so common that I believe it will eventually be the undoing of Western Civilisation, if climate change doesn't accomplish it first.

I respect your views on the US leaving the UN. I would regret it if it happens because I believe, as the world's most powerful nation, the US has a capacity to make a great contribution for good or ill. But equally you have the absolute moral right to abstain. I guess it's up to how the majority votes.

However, I believe that on balance, the WHO does far more good than harm, and it is still an immensely useful tool in communication about and coordinating on matters that affect the whole of humanity across the globe. There's no other single organisation that can.

One difficulty is bureaucracy - even with satellite transmission and computers, it is still impossible for umbrella organisations to keep up with the speed of the spread of the virus.

Doctors are now observing that Twitter and Social media are often reporting new outbreaks faster and more accurately that the authorities in each state.
In Australia, a local outbreak can be know here and now, but the rest of the country only hears about it tomorrow morning.

Only yesterday, my university, Southern Cross, had to be closed. A Philipino lecturer had flown in for a week and during that time had had contact with 45 students. After flying home, he felt symptoms of the Covid19 and tested positive. The 45 students are now in quarantine for two weeks and the university is sterilising the two campuses visited by the lecturer. The news went out via ABC news on the day it happened - but it didn't get into our government statistics 'til today. No doubt WHO will have it up by tomorrow. But in the meantime, any one of those 45 students may have passed the virus to others before they knew they needed to self-isolate. Here, Covid cases are multiplying at a rate of 33% per day - and we're considered one of the most proactive countries in the world on this issue. Others are following our lead on government responses. This post was edited by inky at March 11, 2020 9:02 PM MDT

WHO is headed by Dr. Tedros and has been since 2017.  Right after he got the office he tried to appoint Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador.  Mugabe is a Marxist dictator who ruled Zimbabwe since 1987.  They were finally able to run him out of office in 2017 and his buddy Tedros tried to give him the ambassador post.  Tedros is guilty of years of human rights abuses and corruption his home country,Ethiopia.  Since he's been at WHO he has been abused of fraud and spending money for the Ebola outbreak on his girlfriend among other things.  The UN began investigation about a year ago but that's like having Bonnie investigate Clyde.  The UN and WHO corrupt as hell and should be resolved, or at least I think the USA should pull out .  Without our money it would fall because there wouldn't be enough money to keep the corrupt goons happy.  

All absolutely valid points, Thrifty, and I don't discount in the least how sinister that kind of cronyism is. Mugabe was only slightly less bad than Idi Amin in terms of corruption and terrorising his own people. He might have called himself a Marxist, but there was never anything marxist about his policies while in power - it was a dictatorship with his "democratically" elected parliament no more than an oligarchic support group. I also agree that I don't like Tedros.
I think the WHO was 2 weeks too slow in declaring a pandemic - but I don't think it had anything to do with corruption in this case. Rather, I think it was due to the bureaucratic criteria preset for determining the difference between epidemic and pandemic. They were based on the 1919 Spanish Flu, AIDS, Ebola, Bird Flu, Sars and other outbreaks. Epidemiology changes with the characteristics of each new disease and gets updated according to the statistics. This means it's never possible to be completely on top of something new.
Since a virus cannot discriminate between countries, races, cronies or political allegiance, I'd say it cannot be influenced by corruption.
The only "discrimination" in this pandemic is money, a human factor. Countries with poorer public health systems will suffer the worst because they will have large numbers of citizens who cannot afford to see a doctor and who cannot take time off work if feeling ill.

As to Tedros, his time at the top is limited.  There may indeed have been some kind of corruption involved in Tedros getting that position - but I don't think it so easy for him to manipulate from that position. He has to go with the vote of the entire WHO and he must follow the advice of experts.

He’s big with the plague and pestilence thing. 

Sux to be us. (I'm drunk, so forgive me.)