Unanimous Consent Request
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, when it comes to the virus pandemic that faces the world, the World Health Organization is not serving its member nations the way it should. The World Health Organization's mission is to promote worldwide health, to reduce the burdens of disease and poverty, and to provide access to healthcare, especially for the world's most vulnerable populations. The World Health Organization states as its guiding principle that all people should enjoy the highest standard of health regardless of race, religion, economics, social condition, or political belief. It serves primarily as a coordinating body to share information and best practices by connecting experts in different countries.
The virus that emerged in Wuhan, China, which has caused the disease now known as COVID-19, has had a devastating impact on the health of people worldwide as well as the global economy. Nations, including the United States, have been scrambling to deal with the impact of the virus since the beginning of the year. Without a doubt, worldwide efforts to combat COVID-19 would have been greatly benefited from independent, unbiased, and informative data from the world's leader in health, the World Health Organization. Unfortunately, information coming from this organization since the beginning of the year has left much to be desired in its often providing information that we know now to be inaccurate or at least incomplete. The American people and the citizens of every country--all of whom rely on direct and truthful information--deserve better from Dr. Tedros and his team who lead the World Health Organization.
China, which is where the current crisis began, has not done its part either in its seeking of or in providing that very crucial information that, had it come out sooner, would have saved many lives. As an example of China's not cooperating, a doctor in Wuhan, China, by the name of Dr. Li Wenliang, raised concerns about the growing pandemic in early January. Dr. Li tried to blow the whistle on the spread of one of the world's deadliest diseases. Do you know what he got for doing that? He was punished by the Communist Chinese Government for ``spreading rumors.''
Tragically, Dr. Li passed away in early February due to this virus, COVID-19. After the death of Dr. Li, he actually became a rallying point for Chinese citizens who were very upset about their government's coverup of this virus. Only then, after he died and after the public outroar, did the Chinese Government apologize to his family and posthumously drop Dr. Li's reprimand. Throughout this time, the World Health Organization demonstrated no interest in the accurate and verifiable information on the true dangers of this virus.
We now know that, in late December 2019, Taiwanese officials sounded the alarm directly to the World Health Organization about the human-to- human transmission of the virus. Prior to that, it was only thought there was an animal-to-human transmission, but Taiwanese officials blew the whistle. The Taiwan Centers for Disease Control sent an email to the World Health Organization--an email that has now been forwarded to my office and has been widely reported. It warned of ``at least seven atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China.'' Additionally, this email communication noted that those individuals had been isolated for treatment, which we now know is said to be the standard operating procedure for preventing human-to-human transmission, but still, at that time, it was considered to be animal to human.
Taken together, this information should have been very much a red flag to the World Health Organization's leadership that the virus was capable of having human-to-human transmission. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization chose to ignore these warnings and, thus, failed to pass on this critical information to other countries. Instead, what did the World Health Organization do? It was complicit in the Chinese Government's coverup. It stated the opposite--that there was not human- to-human transmission. In fact, the World Health Organization even retweeted Chinese propaganda on January 14--that there was ``no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,'' which is contrary to the information that the World Health Organization got from the Taiwanese.
It ought to be very clear that misleading the public like this is simply egregious. By sidelining Taiwan's participation, which has one of the lowest known COVID-19 infection rates per capita, despite its proximity to Mainland China, the World Health Organization stymied information about a more effective response to the pandemic. It was during these critical days back in January when the spread of the virus could have been greatly slowed or even contained and could have saved a lot of lives.
The World Health Organization's mandate is to coordinate responses and facilitate information sharing to all of its members on a health emergency--members which include probably almost every country on this globe. This gross mishandling of the organization's most important mandate has cost countless lives around the world.
While China covered up the extent of the virus's spread, the World Health Organization continued to praise China for its so-called proactive response and transparency. General Secretary Xi waited a crucial 6 days, until January 20, before announcing the findings by China's National Health Commission about the danger of the widespread human-to-human coronavirus contagion. Now, just think for a while of the time lost between Taiwan's warning to the World Health Organization in late December 2019 and General Secretary Xi's admitting on January 20 of its human-to-human transmission. That time lost could have saved the whole world thousands of lives because they could have been on top of the situation as to how bad it was, which was much more than anybody knew at that particular time
General Secretary Xi's government also delayed an access request for the World Health Organization's experts to visit affected regions at the end of January by almost 2 weeks--another 2 weeks lost. He has also continually fed disinformation to foreign citizens via several misleading tweets by his foreign ministry and multiple unfounded claims that have been posted on state-run media websites.
Despite this and also other evidence that China actively silenced whistleblowers and doctors domestically and that the Communist Party's officials were aware of the spread well before reporting it, the World Health Organization's officials continued to praise China's response and transparency. The World Health Organization lauded China for releasing the virus's genome in mid-January while it neglected to mention that it took China at least 14 days to do this even as the virus continued to spread across Europe and reach America.
Dr. Tedros said in early February that there was no need for measures that unnecessarily interfered with international travel and trade in trying to halt the spread of that coronavirus. Now, early February was a few days after President Trump stopped travel from China except for American citizens who were coming home. Yet, during that period of time, Dr. Tedros thought it was unnecessary to interfere with international travel.
Time and again, the World Health Organization endorsed and also repeated Chinese Government talking points, and it did it all to the rest of the world's detriment. We now know that there was a continued flow of misinformation that came from the Chinese Government since the onset of the pandemic with there being little to no pushback from the World Health Organization as to whether that information was accurate.
In mid-February, officials from the World Health Organization--yet again, uncritically--parroted Chinese Government propaganda by stating that there were signs that confirmed and suspected cases of COVID-19 had declined in China. The U.S. intelligence community has, in fact, asserted that China misrepresented both the number of cases and its death toll from the virus, concealing the real extent of the outbreak in its country, and that China intentionally hid or even destroyed evidence of the virus' outbreak.
In a dossier that was leaked to the Australian Daily Telegraph, it is alleged that China began censoring information as early as December 31, 2019--precisely when Taiwan, in its caring about the whole world as it knew what might be going on, was sounding that alarm to the World Health Organization.
Previously, Chinese leaders came under incredible scrutiny by the World Health Organization back in 2003 for the SARS outbreak. China was not transparent with SARS, just like they weren't transparent until too late in regard to this virus pandemic that we are fighting today. Back then, the Chinese Government made sure that information regarding the outbreak was not made public. At that point, the World Health Organization did what they are responsible for doing: They publicly reprimanded China back in 2003 on the SARS outbreak. Chinese leaders then quickly fell in line with the rest of the world in sharing its data with the World Health Organization member countries. If the World Health Organization had been doing its job on this pandemic, then maybe China would have been quicker admitting that its spread was human-to- human and how bad it was even in their own country.
However, we are seeing a very different approach now to the organization's handling of China's information suppression campaign, with the World Health Organization often praising China for its information sharing, but make no mistake, China has been nothing but deceptive in its handling of COVID-19.
We must remember that China has a long history of not being transparent with respect to the outbreaks of viruses, and there is little to no evidence suggesting we should start believing China now-- meaning, of course, the Chinese Communist leaders. Nobody in this world is going to hold the Chinese people responsible for this.
Global leaders are now coming to realize that China is responsible for this pandemic, with global sentiment against the Chinese Communist Party at its highest since the 1999 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
It is important that world leaders, including President Trump, keep pressure on China to finally be transparent with its data so we can join together in combating this deadly disease. We have a report from the Department of Homeland Security that says that China ``intentionally concealed the severity'' of the pandemic from the world. To make matters worse, the report further states that while China continues to downplay the pandemic, it began to increase imports and decrease exports of medical supplies. This report from the Department of Homeland Security suggests that China was beginning to hoard these medical supplies from the rest of the world. So they knew how bad this was in their own country. Secretary Pompeo recently stated that there is a significant amount of evidence that this virus came from the laboratory in Wuhan, China, contrary to what Chinese Communist Party propagandists have been pushing throughout the world.
On April 9, I wrote to the World Health Organization seeking answers to several questions regarding the organization's handling of COVID-19. I wanted to know what the World Health Organization knew and when they knew it. I asked that my questions be answered no later than May 1. Much to my dismay, the World Health Organization has refused to answer my questions about its handling of the virus. It would seem that the organization is much more focused on covering for China than it is in answering questions that every single American has a right to know.
Not only does the United States have the right to know this information for the benefit of the world, because transparency brings accountability, but because we give about $400 million a year to support the World Health Organization. I believe we are the largest contributor to it, and I believe China gives about 10 percent of what the U.S. taxpayers put in. I want to state that I will continue to push the World Health Organization for answers. There are probably a lot more questions that ought to be asked in addition to the questions in my letter.
Ultimately, the primary responsibility for this pandemic lies with the Chinese Communist Government authorities who actively concealed the outbreak since the fall of 2019 and suppressed the spread of accurate information about the virus, but the World Health Organization also bears responsibility for aiding and abetting the Chinese Communist Party's coverup. That is why I support a full congressional investigation into how the World Health Organization has bowed to Chinese pressure with the COVID-19 outbreak. The leaders of the World Health Organization need to be held accountable for their role in promoting misinformation and helping China cover up this global pandemic. Americans deserve to know what the World Health Organization leaders knew and when they knew it.
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