Analysis: Trump flouts the experts, even in own government

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the nation’s top infectious disease doctor warned it could be risky for schools to open this fall, President Donald Trump said that was unacceptable.

When experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced a roadmap for how Americans could slowly get back to work and other activities, Trump’s top advisers rejected it.

And when the Food and Drug Administration warned against taking a malaria drug to combat COVID-19 except in rare circumstances, Trump asked his doctor for it anyway.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into stark relief the extent of Trump’s disregard for scientific and medical expertise, even when the safety of millions of Americans or his own personal health is on the line. In public briefings and private meetings, he’s challenged the very experts his administration has pulled together to address the crisis, often preferring to follow his own instincts or the advice of allies in the business world or conservative media.

In doing so, Trump appears to be disregarding what has long been considered the special responsibility of the American president to set an example for the nation, unconcerned that taking a personal risk could lead millions of others looking to the White House for guidance to do the same.

“He forgets that he’s president and that what he does and says, people listen to and model themselves on that,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University.

Health professionals’ concerns became particularly acute this week following Trump’s surprise revelation that he was taking hydroxychloroquine, a drug he and several of his allies have been pushing despite warnings from experts. The FDA cautioned earlier this year that the drug should only be taken for COVID-19 in a hospital or research setting because of potentially fatal side effects.

The president is not in a hospital. He is not participating in a clinical trial. And he doesn’t have the coronavirus. Instead, he told reporters he was taking the drug as a “line of defense” after a pair of White House staffers contracted the virus.

Addressing the criticism of his decision on Tuesday, the president appeared undeterred. He said he was making an “individual decision” and suggested one of the studies raising concerns about the drug was a personal attack.

“It was a Trump enemy statement,” he said.

David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Trump often appears to relish the opportunity to challenge the guidance of the government without recognizing that he is the head of that same government.


“He’s acting as the leader of a populist movement that resents the things government is asking people to do,” Axelrod said.

It’s not new. Trump has a history of flouting scientific and medical expertise, both as a private citizen and as president.

He’s questioned whether childhood vaccines cause autism, despite ample evidence to the contrary. He’s played down dire warnings about the impact of climate change on the environment and public health, pulling the U.S. out of a global accord aimed at reduced emissions and rolling back regulations that would do the same. When he stepped out onto a White House balcony in 2017 to view a solar eclipse, he ignored a well-known warning from scientists and looked directly at the sun without protective glasses.

Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist, said Trump’s dismissive view of scientific expertise echoes the suspicion many of the president’s supporters have of “elites” in politics and other fields.

“His attitude has been ‘I know more than the generals. I know more than the economists.’ Now, it’s ‘I know more than the scientists,’” said Baker, who served as an adviser to former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel and Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy.

While some of Trump’s scientific skepticism may well be political strategy, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised the stakes. The virus spread swiftly across the world, leaving many Americans uncertain about how to protect themselves and looking to their leaders for best practices on everything from testing to treatment, and now for guidance on how to begin resuming daily activities.

But the messages from the White House have often been muddled. Trump has repeatedly pushed for a more aggressive economic opening than many of his public health advisers and has used his presidential megaphone to amplify unproven, and sometimes dangerous, methods for combating the virus.

At times, that approach has rattled his own advisers, most notably after he mused during a televised briefing that ingesting disinfectant might fight off the virus. That statement prompted an extraordinary outcry, with the manufacturers of household cleaners issuing statements warning against following Trump’s suggestions.

The president’s disclosure that he is taking hydroxychloroquine set off a similar scramble. White House officials urged Americans to follow the recommendations of their doctors, while many doctors said taking the drug could carry significant risk.

“I would not recommend taking this drug unless you are hospitalized and your doctor thinks it makes sense or you’re in a clinical trial,” said Dr. Radha Rajasingham, the principal investigator of a hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis study underway at the University of Minnesota. She added, “It is not helpful to the American people to use it in this context and that worries me.”

One potential bright spot for those concerned the public will follow Trump’s lead: Recent polling suggests most Americans don’t view the president as a reliable source of information on the pandemic.

Just 23% of Americans said they have a high level of trust in what the president is telling the public about the virus, according to an April survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Even some Republicans took a dim view of the president’s reliability: 22% said they had little or no trust in what the president says about the COVID-19 outbreak.

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Madhani reported from Chicago.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Julie Pace has covered the White House and politics for the AP since 2007. Aamer Madhani has covered the White House for AP since 2019

UPDATED
US, China standoff ensnares WHO meeting on COVID-19 fight
GENEVA (AP) — Facing the most disruptive pandemic in generations, the technocratic halls of the World Health Organization are now the scene of pitched battles in an increasingly bitter proxy war between the China and the United States.

At the U.N. health agency’s annual assembly this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping joined by video conference to offer more money and support. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump railed against the WHO in a letter accusing it of covering up the coronavirus outbreak with China — and threatening to permanently halt U.S. funding that has been its main financial lifeblood for years.

It marked the latest showdown between the world’s last superpower and the rising Asian giant vying to supplant it on the global stage — this time against the backdrop of a disease that has killed over 300,000 people, left hundreds of millions jobless and ground the world economy to a halt.

For America’s allies in the West and beyond — who have counted on the postwar stability and prosperity that the United States has fostered — the standoff was another gut-check moment about the “America First” leader, now heading into a tough reelection contest.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Health and Human Rights at Georgetown University, said the withdrawal of the U.S. from the global health world would mark a seismic political shift.

“What the U.S. is doing is acting like a bully, making an existential threat to the WHO, and my worry is if the U.S. ever made good on that pledge, the world would splinter,” he said. “This is giving an enormous political prize to China because China has long been looking for a chance to shine on the global stage.”

A U.S. exit would likely weaken the global health agency and leave the U.S. and China to each fund their own projects, Gostin said.

At the assembly that ended Tuesday, European Union leaders tried to strike a middle ground between the two rivals, and the agency’s director-general simply tried to keep the focus on fighting the disease — not each other.

The assembly’s opening day Monday was book-ended by two very different messages. On one side, Xi, serene beside the Chinese flag and a landscape mural, called in to say that China would offer $2 billion over two years to help with the COVID-19 response and economic fallout. He vowed that any vaccine against the disease developed in his country would be made a “global public good.”

On the other, Trump threatened to cut U.S. funding to the WHO for good unless the agency commits to “substantive improvements” in the next 30 days, in a letter to agency Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. It’s not clear what those improvements are.

“I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests,” Trump wrote.

The U.S. is the biggest WHO donor, providing about $450 million a year.

Europeans looked on aghast.

“Watching the World Health Assembly today was observing the post-American world,” tweeted former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “A confident and assertive China with clear strategic approach. A EU trying to rescue what’s left of global cooperation. And a disruptive U.S. more keen on fighting China than fighting COVID19.”

Trump’s threat followed an intense internal debate within the administration between aides intent on eliminating all funding for the WHO and those favoring a more measured response, such as pegging U.S. funding temporarily to the level provided by China, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

The WHO and other institutions have often drawn criticism from conservatives who are part of Trump’s base and disdain U.N.-style internationalism.

In the end, Trump reiterated a number of accusations and complaints that he has publicly made before, such as that the agency’s claims about the virus were “either grossly inaccurate or misleading.”

He also alleged that the WHO had “consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal.”

On Tuesday, the Lancet called that characterization “factually incorrect,” noting that the first papers published on the coronavirus did not appear until January.

George Davey Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Bristol, called Trump’s letter “an undisguised political attack on China.”

WHO acknowledged receipt of the missive and said it was considering it.

Tedros, an Ethiopian who goes by his first name, appeared determined to rise above the new bout of criticism, saying “WHO’s focus now is fighting the pandemic with every tool at our disposal.”

Medical experts said the attacks from Trump, who has repeatedly shunned and berated international institutions, were hurting the WHO’s ability to protect global health.

Devi Sridhar, a professor of global health at the University of Edinburgh, said the letter was likely written for Trump’s political base and meant to deflect blame for the virus’ devastating impact in the U.S., which has by far the most infections and deaths in the world.

“China and the U.S. are fighting it out like divorced parents while WHO is the child caught in the middle,” she said.

Nonetheless, the assembly produced a unanimous resolution — with both China and the U.S. on board — that backs global cooperation to find tools to address COVID-19 and evaluate the world’s response, as coordinated by WHO, to it.

It wasn’t immediately clear how, when or by whom that evaluation will be conducted. Xi expressed support for a review — but said it should wait until after the pandemic is over.

The European Union, the resolution’s chief architect, urged countries to support the WHO in the wake of Trump’s attacks.

“This is the time for all humanity to rally around a common cause,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

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Maria Cheng reported from London. Lorne Cook in Brussels, Matt Lee in Washington, and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

WHO bows to calls from countries for independent virus probe

WHO HOLDS TWO DAY VIRTUAL GLOBAL CONFERENCE EVERYONE SHOWS UP EXCEPT THE USA

In this Monday, Feb. 24, 2020 file photo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), addresses a press conference about the update on COVID-19 at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The European Union is calling for an independent evaluation of the World Health Organization’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, “to review experience gained and lessons learned.” (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization bowed to calls Monday from most of its member states to launch an independent probe into how it managed the international response to the coronavirus, which has been clouded by finger-pointing between the U.S. and China over a pandemic that has killed over 300,000 people and leveled the global economy.

The “comprehensive evaluation,” sought by a coalition of African, European and other countries, is intended to review “lessons learned” from WHO’s coordination of the global response to COVID-19, but would stop short of looking into contentious issues such as the origins of the new coronavirus. U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed he has proof suggesting the coronavirus originated in a lab in China while the scientific community has insisted all evidence to date shows the virus likely jumped into humans from animals.


In Washington on Monday, Trump faulted WHO for having done “a very sad job” and said he was considering whether to cut the annual U.S. funding from $450 million a year to $40 million.

“They gave us a lot of bad advice, terrible advice,” he said. “They were wrong so much, always on the side of China.”

Later Monday, Trump tweeted a letter he had sent WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In the letter, Trump said “the only way forward” is if WHO “can actually demonstrate independence from China.”

Trump said that unless WHO commits to “substantive improvements over the next 30 days,” he will make a temporary suspension of U.S. funding permanent.

WHO’s normally bureaucratic annual assembly this week has been overshadowed by mutual recriminations and political sniping between the U.S. and China. Trump has repeatedly attacked WHO, claiming that it helped China conceal the extent of the coronavirus pandemic in its early stages. Several Republican lawmakers have called on Tedros to resign.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Monday it was time to be frank about why COVID-19 has “spun out of control.”

“There was a failure by this organization to obtain the information that the world needed and that failure cost many lives,” Azar said. Speaking hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced China would provide $2 billion to help respond to the outbreak and its economic fallout, Azar said the U.S. had allocated $9 billion to coronavirus containment efforts around the world.

Tedros said he would launch an independent evaluation of WHO’s response “at the earliest appropriate moment” — alluding to findings published Monday in a first report by an oversight advisory body commissioned to look into WHO’s response.

The 11-page report raised questions such as whether WHO’s warning system for alerting the world to outbreaks is adequate, and suggested member states might need to “reassess” WHO’s role in providing travel advice to countries.

In his opening remarks at the WHO meeting, Tedros held firm and sought to focus on the bigger troubles posed by the outbreak, saying “we have been humbled by this very small microbe.”

“This contagion exposes the fault lines, inequalities, injustices and contradictions of our modern world,” Tedros said. “And geopolitical divisions have been thrown into sharp relief.”
Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak

China, meanwhile, sought to divert attention to its renewed efforts to slow the coronavirus pandemic, with Xi announcing the $2 billion outlay over two years to fight it. Last year, China donated about $86 million to WHO.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot characterized China’s newly announced contribution as “a token to distract from calls from a growing number of nations demanding accountability for the Chinese government’s failure to meet its obligations.” He said that since China was “the source” of the outbreak, it had “a special responsibility to pay more and give more.”

Xi insisted that China had acted with “openness, transparency and responsibility” when the epidemic was detected in Wuhan. He said China had give all relevant outbreak data to WHO and other countries, including the virus’s genetic sequence, “in a most timely fashion.”

Xi said that in recent weeks, China has dispatched medical supplies to more than 50 African countries and that 46 Chinese medical teams were currently on the continent helping local officials.

Other world leaders including the presidents of France, South Korea and South Africa and Germany’s chancellor were also piped in to throw their support to the WHO, which has been put on the defensive from a Trump administration that has blamed it for mishandling the outbreak and showering excessive praise on China’s response. The European Union and others staked out a middle ground.

The Trump administration has claimed that WHO criticized a U.S. travel ban that Trump ordered on people arriving from China.

Trump ordered a temporary suspension of funding for WHO from the United States — the health agency’s biggest single donor — pending a review of its early response. The advisory body, echoing comments from many countries, said such a review during the “heat of the response” could hurt WHO’s ability to respond to it.

Xi said China supports the idea of a comprehensive review of the global response to COVID-19 and that it should be “based on science and professionalism led by WHO, and conducted in an objective and impartial manner.”

Tedros emphasized that WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a global health emergency on Jan. 30, its highest level of alert, at a time when there were fewer than 100 cases outside of China. In the following weeks, WHO warned countries there was a narrowing “window of opportunity” to prevent the virus from spreading globally.

During the first few months of the outbreak, WHO officials repeatedly described the virus’s spread as “limited” and said it wasn’t as transmissible as flu; experts have since said COVID-19 spreads even faster. It declared the outbreak to be a pandemic on March 11, after the virus had killed thousands globally and sparked large epidemics in South Korea, Italy, Iran and elsewhere.

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AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng reported from London. Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report. And Aamer Madhani contributed to this report from Chicago

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Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Experts: Trump’s threats to WHO could undercut global health

In this Monday, March 9, 2020 file photo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization speaks during a news conference on updates regarding the novel coronavirus COVID-19, at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Outbreak experts say the increasing attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump on the World Health Organization for its handling of the coronavirus demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the U.N. health agency's role and could ultimately serve to weaken global health. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, file)

GENEVA (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on the World Health Organization are hurting its ability to protect global health, medical experts said Tuesday, as many WHO member states rallied around the U.N. health agency — even as they urged a look into its coordination of the global response to the coronavirus .

Political sniping on issues like war in Ukraine and Taiwan’s status pockmarked a second and final day of the WHO’s annual assembly, which nonetheless produced a unanimous resolution that backs cooperation to find tools to address COVID-19 and inspect the world’s response to it, among other things..


World leaders like the presidents of the European Commission and Colombia beamed in by video conference, hours after Trump made public his letter sent Monday to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus blasting “repeated missteps” of the agency as “very costly for the world.”

Tedros, an Ethiopian who goes by his first name, appeared determined to rise above the new bout of U.S. criticism, saying “WHO’s focus now is fighting the pandemic with every tool at our disposal. Our focus is on saving lives. At the end of the day, what matters is life.”

“Dark and difficult days may lie ahead but guided by science together, we will overcome,” Tedros said. “Let hope be the antidote to fear.”

The European Union, the resolution’s chief architect, urged countries to support WHO in the wake of Trump’s continued attacks. European Commission spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson said now wasn’t “the time for finger-pointing or undermining multilateral cooperation.”

The resolution, among other things, calls on Tedros to initiate “at the earliest appropriate moment ... an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” that would “review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how, when or by whom that evaluation will be conducted. China, where the outbreak emerged, expressed support for such a review, but said it should wait until after the pandemic is over.

While airing a few reservations, the U.S. nevertheless didn’t oppose the resolution.

The resolution also pointed to the “role of extensive immunization against COVID-19 as a global public good,” and called for participants to “work collaboratively” to produce “safe, effective, quality, affordable diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines” for the COVID-19 response.


“This is the time for science and solidarity. This is the time for all humanity to rally around a common cause,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “And you can count on Europe to always play for the team.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said “together we stress the central role of the World Health Organization in international health management” and called for it to be strengthened.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said simply: “I support WHO and Dr. Tedros so that they lead and build on these lessons learned, so that they can help us to be better prepared for future challenges.”

Health experts said Trump’s increasing attacks on WHO for its handling of the coronavirus demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the U.N. agency’s role and could ultimately serve to weaken global health.

In his letter, Trump threatened to permanently cut U.S. funding to WHO unless the agency commits to “substantive improvements” in the next 30 days.

“I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests,” he wrote. The U.S. is the WHO’s biggest donor, providing about $450 million a year.

Devi Sridhar, a professor of global health at the University of Edinburgh, said the letter was likely written for Trump’s political base and meant to deflect blame for the virus’ devastating impact in the U.S., which has by far the most infections and virus deaths in the world.

“China and the U.S. are fighting it out like divorced parents while WHO is the child caught in the middle, trying not to pick sides,” she said.

“President Trump doesn’t understand what the WHO can and cannot do,” she said, explaining that it sets international standards and is driven by its member countries. “If he thinks they need more power, then member states should agree and delegate it more.”

Michael Head, a senior research fellow at the University of Southampton, said much of what Trump was demanding was beyond WHO’s intended scope. He said that WHO provides expert guidance, “not enforcement by law.”

Head noted that there are clear gaps in governance elsewhere that have allowed COVID-19 to spread — notably in the U.S., which has seen 1.5 million infections and more than 90,000 deaths linked to COVID-19.

Trump has repeatedly accused WHO of being unduly influenced by China, and wrote that the agency has been “curiously insistent” on praising the country’s “alleged transparency.”

WHO acknowledged receipt of Trump’s missive and said it was “considering the contents of the letter.” The agency has previously emphasized that it declared a global health emergency on Jan. 30, when there were fewer than 100 cases of coronavirus outside of China.

When that declaration was made, Tedros said China was setting a new standard for outbreak response. He said the world owed China gratitude for the way it bought other nations time to plan, with the extraordinary measures it was taking to contain the virus.

Trump’s letter also cited former WHO chief Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland as an example of a leader who stood up to China. In 2003, Brundtland called out China for its cover-up of the SARS outbreak and issued travel recommendations warning against travel to several Chinese cities. Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister, dismissed Trump’s criticisms of Tedros in a statement Tuesday.

“The last thing we need is to attack the WHO,” she said. WHO has both the necessary experience and authorizations to oversee and share information and at the same time assist all countries to overcome the ongoing corona crisis.”

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Maria Cheng reported from London. Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

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Trump threatens to pull out of WHO over virus response, China

AFP / Johannes EISELEA worker manages the flow of customers into a Food market in the Jackson Heights neighbourhood of Queens in New York City

President Donald Trump has threatened to pull the US out of the World Health Organization, accusing it of botching the global coronavirus response and of being a "puppet of China."

The American leader has been locked in a bitter spat with Beijing, alleging it covered up the initial outbreak in central China late last year before the disease unleashed death and economic devastation across the planet.

AFP / John SAEKIRise of COVID-19 deaths

More than 317,000 people have died of COVID-19 out of nearly 4.8 million infections worldwide, and governments are scrambling to contain the virus while seeking ways to resuscitate their hammered economies.

With more fatalities and cases in the United States than any other country by far, under-pressure Trump has blamed the WHO for not doing enough to combat its initial spread.

AFP / Miguel SCHINCARIOLA resident of Paraisopolis, one of Sao Paulo's largest slums, takes part in a protest to demand more aid from the Brazilian government during the COVID-19 pandemic

"They're a puppet of China, they're China-centric to put it nicer," he said on Monday at the White House. "They gave us a lot of bad advice."

Trump had already suspended US funding to the UN body, and after his White House comments, he tweeted a letter he had sent to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus threatening to make that freeze permanent.

AFP / Sai Aung MainMedical staff take the temperature of a resident while going door-to-door for health check-ups in Yangon, Myamar

"It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world," the letter said.

"The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China," it added, giving the body 30 days to show "substantive improvements."

Before the threat, the WHO had promised an independent review of its pandemic response.

AFP / Damien MEYERSchoolchildren wearing masks and face shields attend a class at Claude Debussy college in Angers, western France

Beijing has furiously denied the US allegations that it played down the threat, and Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated at the World Health Assembly that his nation had been "transparent" throughout the crisis.

As he launched his latest attack on China, Trump also dropped a bombshell saying he was taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that his own government's experts have said is not suitable for fighting the coronavirus.

"I take a pill every day," said the president, adding that he is using it because he has "heard a lot of good stories."

- 'A test from God' -

Experts have warned that the social distancing measures that have impacted more than half of humanity will remain necessary to stop the virus until a vaccine or viable medical treatment is available.

AFP / Vincenzo PINTOA nun has her temperature checked before entering St. Peter's Square and Basilica at the Vatican

Development work on a prophylactic is under way at breakneck speed around the world, and results from a trial in the United States sparked optimism on Monday.

Early -- and small -- clinical trials of a vaccine by US firm Moderna showed encouraging results, with recipients showing an immune response similar to people recovering from COVID-19. It will begin a larger second-phase trial soon.

AFP/File / WANG ZHAOScientists at Peking University have said they are developing a drug that can help stop the pandemic without a vaccine

In China, meanwhile, scientists at Peking University have said they are developing a drug that can help stop the pandemic without a vaccine by using antibodies that can neutralize the virus.

They are planning clinical trials for the treatment, and are hoping to have the drug available later this year and in time for any potential winter outbreak.

AFP / Adem ALTANPolice patrol the streets of Ulus during curfew in Ankara, Turkey

Authorities around the world are keeping an eye on such breakthroughs as the virus continues on its destructive path, with many poorer nations now seeing a dramatic rise in infections even as the caseload eases in more developed parts of the world like Europe.

In Indonesia, gravediggers at a cemetery earmarked for COVID-19 victims in the capital Jakarta are struggling to keep up with the number of corpses arriving every day, trying not to touch the bodies and lessen the chance of getting infected themselves.

AFP / ADEK BERRYGravediggers lower the coffin of a COVID-19 victim into a grave at Pondok Ranggon cemetery in Jakarta

"I've been digging graves for 33 years now and I've never been this tired before," said gravedigger Minar.

"This is probably a test from God."

- Violence in Chile -

The vast economic damage caused by the virus has led to unprecedented emergency stimulus measures by governments and central banks, and the latest came from Europe where France and Germany laid out a half-trillion-euro fund.

AFP / Pablo RojasDemonstrators clash with riot police during a protest against Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's government in Santiago

The hard-hit continent has seen deaths and hospitalizations drop in recent days, sparking optimism about a post-pandemic recovery.

The daily death count in the United States has also slowed over the last couple of days, as all 50 states began easing lockdown measures to varying degrees.

The hard-hit continent has seen deaths and hospitalizations drop in recent days, sparking optimism about a post-pandemic recovery.

AFP / Brendan SmialowskiUS President Donald Trump has revealed that he is taking the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure against the coronavirus

The daily death count in the United States has also slowed over the last couple of days, as all 50 states began easing lockdown measures to varying degrees.

But other parts of the world -- especially developing countries -- are only just starting to feel the full force of the virus.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday many governments had ignored WHO recommendations.

"As a result, the virus has spread across the world and is now moving into the Global South, where its impact may be even more devastating," he warned.

AFP / Gent SHKULLAKUStudents follow social distancing guidelines as they enter a school in Albania

Already, Brazil has overtaken Britain to have the third-highest number of infections in the world with around 255,000 confirmed cases, and the death toll in Latin America and the Caribbean has topped 30,000.

In Chile, where the government has imposed strict distancing measures in some areas after a dramatic rise in cases, the economic pressure from lockdowns was brought into sharp focus as violence erupted in a crowded, poor area on the outskirts of the capital Santiago.

Angry residents wielding sticks erected barricades and threw rocks at riot police, who fought back with tear gas and water cannon.

"It is not because of the quarantine," resident Veronica Abarca told AFP.

"It is aid, food, what people are asking for right now."

burs-qan/je

Trump threatens to permanently end WHO funding

May 19 (UPI) -- U.S. President Donald Trump late Monday threatened to permanently pull funding from the World Health Organization unless it commits to "major substantive improvements within the next 30 days."

The threat is an escalation to a hold Trump put on U.S. funding to the United Nations' health agency last month so as to conduct a review of the WHO's response to the coronavirus outbreak. Trump has accused it of "mismanaging and covering up" the spread of the disease.

In the letter posted to his Twitter account on Monday night, Trump said the review has confirmed his concerns over the WHO's handling of the virus and its "alarming lack of independence" from China.

"It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world," Trump wrote in the letter addressed to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China."

Trump said his administration has begun discussions with the WHO on reforms.

"We don't have time to waste," he said. "That is why it is my duty, as president of the United States, to inform you that if the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization."

The letter lists in chronological order several of the missteps Trump accuses the organization of having made, many of which are connected to China.

This is the letter sent to Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization. It is self-explanatory! pic.twitter.com/pF2kzPUpDv— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2020

Amid the pandemic, the Trump administration has leveled criticism at the Asian nation over its lack of transparency and alleged cover-up of its initial outbreak.

U.S. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo earlier this month blamed China and its lack of transparency for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people to the virus worldwide.

China has balked at the United States' allegations, often pointing to praise from the WHO as proof of its openness and strong response to the virus.

In his letter Monday, Trump said because of the WHO's "failure" to publicly call out China's lack of transparency, more than 100 member states have backed a resolution at the ongoing World Health Assembly calling for a review of the WHO's handling of the crisis and for an independent investigation into the virus' origins.

After Trump announced the hold on funding last month, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement saying now is not the time to halt funding to the international organization fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump has said the United States gives between $400 million and $500 million a year to the WHO in contrast to the roughly $40 million it receives from China.

Since the virus emerged from the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, more than 4.8 million people worldwide have been infected resulting in more than 318,000 deaths, according to a live tracker of the virus by Johns Hopkins University. With 1.5 million infections and 90,000 deaths, the United States is by far the worst affected country by the coronavirus.

U.S. blasts WHO's coronavirus response, says failure 'cost many lives'

May 18 (UPI) -- The United States harshly criticized the World Health Organization's response to the coronavirus pandemic Monday, saying the global agency's "failure cost many lives."

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, speaking during the WHO's two-day virtual World Health Assembly, repeated criticisms of the organization made last month by U.S. President Donald Trump, who pulled its funding after accusing it of "mishandling" and "covering up" the coronavirus outbreak.

"In an apparent attempt to conceal this outbreak, at least one member state made a mockery of their transparency obligations, with tremendous costs for the entire world," Azar said, apparently referencing China.

"We saw that WHO failed at its core mission of information sharing and transparency when member states do not act in good faith. This cannot ever happen again," he said.

The U.S. criticisms came after WHO's leader promised an independent investigation into its response to the coronavirus pandemic so that mistakes made during the health crisis are not repeated.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in opening remarks the inquiry will begin at the "earliest appropriate moment" and will review "experience gained and lessons learned" and make recommendations for how to improve "national and global pandemic preparedness."

The COVID-19 outbreak began in December in Wuhan, China.

Ghebreyesus said the WHO is "committed to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement" and urged more international support.

"The world doesn't need another plan, another system, another mechanism, another committee or another organization," Ghebreyesus said. "It needs to strengthen, implement and finance the systems and organizations it has -- including WHO."

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 4.7 million cases and 315,000 deaths have been reported.




Monday's assembly is a gathering of delegations from all 194 member states who meet each year to set the WHO's policies and approve its budget. For the first time, the 2020 assembly is meeting virtually and has been compressed into two days.

After a plenary session on Monday, resolutions from individual delegations will be introduced Tuesday. Attention will be focused on a draft resolution backed by the European Union and Australia that calls for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday said Beijing supports a comprehensive investigation, as long as it's "objective" and "impartial."

Xi also said China will give $2 billion over two years to help with the COVID-19 response and economic and social development in affected countries, especially developing nations.

Australia last month called for an independent investigation to determine how the pandemic started, which drew an angry response from China that accused Canberra of "ideological bias and political games" at a time of worldwide emergency.

More than 120 countries have signed on to the resolution.

China also came under pressure from a U.S.-backed resolution pushing to grant Taiwan "observer status" at the assembly. This, too, was opposed by Beijing, which has long considered Taiwan a renegade breakaway province rather than an independent nation.

The assembly was scheduled to vote Monday on the proposal, but Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said Taipei has dropped the effort. Wu said the proposal was unlikely to be included in the assembly's shortened agenda.