On Wednesday, Stephen McDonell, the BBC’s China correspondent, approvingly tweeted out the latest anti-Trump rant from Richard Horton:
The Editor of The Lancet (one of the world's oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals) has just said on the BBC that the #USA pulling funding from the @WHO right now is a "crime against humanity".
McDonell complained “is this the time for the #USA to be pulling funds? The WHO's helping struggling nations to deal with the #covid19 emergency. We need this to be sorted everywhere. Surely wait til this is over for retribution?” The U.S. is suspending funding for a few months to investigate how the WHO bungled the coronavirus situation with China, but this temporary hold is somehow criminal?
Here’s a tweet of the Horton BBC interview video:
Richard Horton, editor of medical journal The Lancet, says US President Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding to the WHO is an “appalling act that violates every principle of solidarity that we need more than ever today”https://t.co/JMvDJpHA7Z pic.twitter.com/Dl5LYylMgK
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 15, 2020
RICHARD HORTON: The World Health Organization’s primary role is to defend the health of the world’s population, and a crime against humanity is a systematic attempt to hurt the health and well-being of a population. President Trump has clearly committed that crime! The World Health Organization is the world’s only health agency. Its primary responsibility it to coordinate international activity to defend the health of people in the world, and to defund it in such a dramatic way is an appalling act that violates every principle of solidarity that we need more than ever today.”
Horton sounded the same alarm in The Guardian newspaper:
Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, wrote that Trump’s decision was “a crime against humanity … Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”
Horton, like many on the Left, now decry how late the government response was, but have amnesia about what they said a few weeks ago. The Spectator (UK) noted the contrast between Horton on the BBC on March 27...
Honestly, I'm sorry to say this, but it's a national scandal. We shouldn't be in this position. We knew in the last week of January that this was coming. The message from China was absolutely clear that a new virus with pandemic potential was hitting cities, people were being admitted to hospital, admitted to intensive care units and dying.
And the mortality was growing, we knew that eleven weeks ago. Then we wasted February when we could have acted - time when we could have ramped up testing, time when we could have got personal protective equipment ready and disseminated. We did not do it.
...And what Horton tweeted on January 24:
A call for caution please. Media are escalating anxiety by talking of a “killer virus” + “growing fears”. In truth, from what we currently know, 2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. There is no reason to foster panic with exaggerated language.
PS: Horton is one of those guardians of "science" who are full of socialist ardor on the climate: "All health professionals have a duty and obligation to engage in all kinds of non-violent social protest to address the climate emergency."
