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U.S. President Donald Trump’s incompetence and bungling in handling the coronavirus pandemic is indisputable. But his dispute with the World Health Organization (WHO) over its role in covering up the spread of the virus in China is dead on. The organization’s leadership should be dismissed, not defunded, and China should be condemned and sanctioned for its culpability in this catastrophe.

For months, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, unforgivably heaped praise on China for its coronavirus response, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. He took over in 2017 at the behest of China, after serving as the minister of health in Ethiopia — a country where China obtained huge contracts to build hospitals and various infrastructure projects.

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The truth is that while China kept a lid on the virus, it also spread it by allowing thousands of flights all over the world to and from its epicentre during the outbreak in Wuhan. China also silenced its whistleblower, a physician who started warning about the virus in November and was later jailed to keep him quiet, before allegedly dying of the disease. It quietly procured ventilators and medical supplies from other countries before the world knew what was coming. And there is mounting evidence that China lied about its own fatalities, which are likely astronomically higher than the official figures.