The WHO has to rewrite its plague handbook

Apr 06, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
The common cold, a member of the Corona family of viruses, has been causing great discomfort to humans since time immemorial and with all the wonders that medical science has been able to accomplish, it has failed to find a cure for the common cold – confirmation of how defenseless we are against viruses. While we live with the thought that the common cold is just another species of the invisible kind that survived on Noah’s Ark, we humans failed to recognise that deadlier cousins could have possibly made the voyage on the Ark too. Today, COVID-19 has grounded the world economy, restricted our way of life, causing untold sufferings and death of humans on an unprecedented scale since World War 2. Given the present state of affairs. I figure, if the WHO could have gone back in time, they would have done it differently. They would have probably made a call to world leaders to close down the borders around Wuhan, China where the virus was first known to be killing people since last year, and pour in resources to “nip it in the bud” in that locality. The slothfulness of the WHO to react would suggest that they underestimate the destructive power of the virus or was lured into doing so by misinformation being fed to the WHO by China. If this could be proven, China should be held liable to compensate the other countries for the suffering endured.
It is difficult to understand how a virus that was known to be killing people was taken lightly by the WHO, unless being misled. The mindset of the human is difficult to comprehend! Maybe COVID-19 really had to manifest itself on an international scale to fulfill the extreme definition of pandemic – to get the attention of the powers that be in the WHO.
On January 23, the WHO said, the outbreak did not yet constitute a public emergency of international concern and there was “no evidence” at that time of the virus being transmitted from human to human. As the virus begins to spread and slaughter people around the world, the WHO declared a global pandemic on March 11.
To date, no one knows if the worst is yet to come. The financial fallout and the toll on human lives by the time this pandemic would be over, offers an invaluable lesson to the WHO and leaders of the world – never underestimate these invisible monsters (viruses), nip them in the bud as soon as they begin to plague man. WHO has to rewrite its plague handbook.
Rudolph Singh

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News