There is something odd about the international public health bodies. They seem unanimous in favor of the World Health Organization—and concomitantly against US President Donald Trump. A close scrutiny, as we shall see, would show that the oddness is apparent, not real. For most such bodies are run by men and women who are Left-leaning.

The medical journal Lancet’s editor-in-chief Richard Horton said that Trump’s decision to cut aid to the WHO is “a crime against humanity… Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”

Notice Horton’s obvious villainy and treachery: the WHO, by blindly accepting the Chinese version of the novel coronavirus, commits a crime against humanity, and the only world politician of consequence who calls out the global body is accused of that crime! Never was mendacity so insolent or transparent.

The Guardian quoted (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/against-humanity-trump-condemned-for-who-funding-freeze">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/against-humanity-trump-condemned-for-who-funding-freeze</a>) Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Award-winning science journalist and former senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, as saying that the decision was a “damnable” act by a “spiteful” Trump and would cost lives.

Similarly, Dr Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease doctor and associate professor at Boston University’s school of medicine, said the US aid cut was “an absolute disaster. WHO is a global technical partner, the platform through which sovereign countries share data/technology, our eyes on the global scope of this pandemic.”

Lawrence Gostin, the director of the WHO centre on public health and human rights, also slammed the US.

Now, Trump is no god; he indulges in loose talk; he may have made mistakes. But all this is beside the point; on the WHO’s role he is bang on: “I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they are like the public relations agency for China.”

The WHO is not ashamed, nor are its apologists. Which is not surprising, for some of them were just parroting the WHO’s lies. They all also seem to be working in tandem. Horton, for instance, 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.”

This was 10 days after even the WHO had infamously tweeted that there few fears of human-to-human transmissibility of the novel coronavirus. All of them, it seems, were peddling the narrative Beijing wanted to be peddled all over the world. Whether their culpability in making the Wuhan virus a global pandemic was intentional or just a stupid mistake can be known only after a thorough investigation.

In a news show for the state-owned broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), Horton was all praise for China’s “innovation” and its response to Covid-19: “China’s decision to lockdown Wuhan showed that the government acted tremendously decisively in the face of an acute emergency.”

Yeah, China’s actions were indeed tremendously decisive, like lying to the world (through the WHO) about the deadliness of the virus and silencing the whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang (who later died).

Horton was aghast that some politicians “are unfortunately damaging the prospects of international collaboration by being so openly critical of other countries, such as China.” He has also been very critical of the British government for its response to Covid-19.

Horton is not alone in lionizing China. Garrett echoes similar views. In an article in <em>Foreign Policy</em> (<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/">https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/</a>, January 31), she favorably quoted WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s praise for China. In his words, China was “actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”

Garrett herself was impressed: “The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan.”

Public health experts like Horton and Garrett may not qualify as the radical Left, but it is quite sure that they are infected with Leftist germs. Like the coronavirus, Leftist germs also result in asymptomatic cases: those infected may not know about the contagion but they do damage nonetheless.

Having captured most institutions, Left-leaning experts keep spewing dangerous ideas like lockdown, surveillance, and draconian measures in democratic countries—like Covid-related apps and drones.

The Left may have died politically, but it never disappeared; it got reincarnated in academics, the mainstream media, and public health institutions. Its deadliness and evilness remain the same, though..