COVID Update April 17: Today I went to school on the WHO, on testing swabs, on why we can’t have tests, on little kids, on new tests, on drug trials, on where states are, on contact tracing. My thread won’t be able to keep up with my day but I will try.1/
Since we’re cutting funding for the WHO, I decided I’d like to know what they do & what our contribution goes for. So I called the head of one of the world’s most prominent foundations to get a breakdown. 2/
Let’s start with this. 3/
WHO has a 2 year budget. We fund both membership & voluntary contributions that go for things like: -Eradicating polio ($75mm/yr) -Child & maternal health ($75mm/yr) -HIV & TB ($50mm/yr) -Outbreak monitoring ($75mm/yr) You know, highly optional things. 4/
And vaccines. Which I for one am in favor of. 5/
WHO did not do a great job here. Oh, if only they were the only ones that had guilt. But they’re not. Casting blame is important to Trump in the middle of this. We all understand that. It just means more casualties. 6/
Then I went to school on testing. Why don’t we have enough swabs? Why is testing declining? Trump’s plan depends on testing. What are we doing about it? Why are there so many bad tests? Are there any that are good? What’s the hope? I went to school. 10/
But we are THIS close to eradicating polio. But COVID-19 spreading in Africa could cost millions. But COVID-19 spreading anywhere must be tracked. But 4 preceding presidents have made wiping HIV out a signature priority Who do we think we are sending a message to? 7/
Wealthy countries can spend what for us are piddly amounts of money that to the world are massive amounts that can’t be found anywhere else. The WHO’s second largest funder? The Gates Foundation. 8/
I’m not done with this topic. I’m done talking about it here. But I’m not done working on this. This is batshit. 9/
Most things they can only try on people with advanced illness. They strongly believe many word work on people with early illness (like Tamaflu) but to know that we would need to diagnose people earlier. Which means more testing. Back to the same issue. 37/
