Trump has a point – the WHO has failed

The United States has long regarded itself as better prepared for a pandemic than any other country in the world, but it assumed the disease would be flu, rather than a coronavirus. This was a failure of imagination. The Sars epidemic showed the world that coronaviruses can lead to acute and fatal respiratory diseases. The Asian countries that suffered most from Sars updated their pandemic response kits accordingly, with mass testing and patient-tracing technology. Neither Britain nor America thought to do likewise.

In Britain, we’re starting to admit to flaws in our pandemic response. Donald Trump is less inclined to do so, and is instead directing his fury at China and promising to remove funding from the World Health Organisation. There are a far wider number of questions President Trump should be asking his own government agencies, but it’s useful in politics to remember: just because Trump says something, it does not make it wrong. And on the WHO, Trump does have a point.

The WHO is supposed to be the world’s early warning system for new viruses. The most obvious risk comes from China, whose industrial transformation has led to huge growth in urban markets where live animals are sold to feed the workforce. In Guangdong a billion chickens are raised each year. Factor in the other wild animals on sale, the smallholders keeping pigs close to chicken pens, and you end up with viral cauldrons brewing potentially lethal diseases.

China’s political system is one that tends to suppress embarrassing disclosures such as the emergence of a new virus — it did the same with the Sars epidemic. This is why the WHO needs leadership capable of being sceptical about official information coming from China.