Dorchester Times: OUR VIEW: Trump Is Right to Stop WHO Funding

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

OUR VIEW: Trump Is Right to Stop WHO Funding

This evening, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would begin withholding funds from the World Health Organization (WHO).

At best, the WHO has been completely worthless in preventing or slowing the worst global pandemic since 1918. At worst, the organization is being run by China.

The United States is easily the top donor to the WHO, giving it more than $400 million in 2019, according to the State Department. Meanwhile, China -- where the coronavirus originated -- gave the group just $44 million.

President Trump is to be commended for this common-sense move. Consider these facts:

On Jan. 14, the WHO tweeted that there had been "no human transmissions" of the novel coronavirus within China yet, as it cited Chinese health officials. (That was just two weeks before Trump's travel ban on China -- the same ban that the national news media and Joe Biden called "racist" and "xenophobic," like brainwashed teenagers.)

While the bureaucrats at WHO were tweeting, they were failing to obtain virus samples from China. The WHO continuously relied on information from Chinese health authorities, all while the Communist government was being accused of obscuring facts and figures -- and had begun expelling American journalists. (By the way, the Chinese government reportedly knew the disease was spreading before the WHO's Jan. 14 tweet was sent, according to the South China Morning Post.)

Even as U.S. intelligence confirmed that the Chinese Communist Party has been concealing the truth regarding its COVID-19 deaths, the WHO has upheld China's figures as truth. China hid the outbreak of COVID-19, manipulated its numbers, and at no point did the WHO question China or seek the truth.

The WHO decided as late as Jan. 22 that the coronavirus did not pose a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, all while praising China’s response. (We aren't even sure if China's actions were not intentional.)

Folks, it's estimated that WHO's inaction created a twenty-fold increase in COVID-19 cases.

Whether in Dorchester, Nebraska; Detroit, Michigan; or Dos Hermanas, Spain, countless lives could have been saved, businesses could been unharmed, and jobs could have been preserved had the WHO done its job.

In his remarks tonight, President Trump noted that the WHO not only opposed his January travel ban, but that in doing so, European nation's failed to impose their own travel bans. Their trust in the WHO lead to an explosion in COVID-19 cases in EU nations, which in turn led to the crisis in the U.S.

"It would have been so easy (for the WHO) to have been truthful," the president said tonight.

Had the WHO been truthful, many fewer deaths would have occurred -- and much less economic harm would have been inflicted upon billions of humans who need economic security, not trillions from governments hellbent on making their currencies nearly worthless.

It seems "the swamp" exists well beyond the borders of Washington, D.C.

Keep draining, we say.

5 comments:

AnonymousApril 15, 2020 at 8:02 PM
Keep drinking that Trump kool-aid. He has done a few good things for the country but overall he has done more harm than good. His attitude toward minorities and females is nothing less than despicable and hopefully does not represent the thoughts of the towns people. Disagree with him and you are either a democrat or you will get fired. The people of Minnesota thought they had something when they elected Jesse Ventura, a professional wrestler. They soon realized he was full of bu## shi# and did not know how to lead their state. He never saw a second term. Had Trump listened to the scientists who understand how viruses spread, many lives could have possibly been saved. Now he wants to reopen the country. He says if people aren't working that there will be thousands of suicides. I do not here of any suicide numbers that are comparable to the virus numbers. How many lives will be lost and how much money will be lost and wasted because he wants to reopen the country. He says that the federal government is only there as backup and that the states should have seen this coming. Maybe Ricketts should raise our taxes so the State can buy tanks, planes and weapons to defend ourselves in case a foreign country tries to invade us. With the USA pulling out of the WHO, who is going to wage the war against the ebola virus, which is still going strong and could reach our shores or impact our national interests overseas. His slogan "Make America great again" will only happen when he is gone. Might be a good time to vote in an independent or at the very least a democrat. Who is the real killer, Trump or the Covid 19? Yea, keep drinking his kool-aid.
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousApril 16, 2020 at 7:14 PM
Who is "we"? You don't need to express your personal views and opinions. What a fake you are and this blog. FAKE NEWS!!
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousApril 18, 2020 at 7:17 AM
Wow. That's the intellectual ammo of the Trump haters. All emotion, few electro-chemical reactions taking place in their smooth gray matter.
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousApril 27, 2020 at 10:53 AM
This commentary is spot on! Nice work, Times. The backlash against China and the WHO for failing to warn us has just begun.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Village Dweller checks all reader comments to determine if they are appropriate for print.

Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."