In this Jan. 22, 2020, photo released on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020, by China’s Xinhua News Agency, medical workers of the Union Hospital with the Tongji Medical College of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan participate in a ceremony to form an “assault team” to battle against a coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 23, 2020. China closed off a city of more than 11 million people Thursday in an unprecedented effort to try to contain a deadly new viral illness that has sickened hundreds and spread to other cities and countries in the Lunar New Year travel rush. (Cheng Min/Xinhua via AP)

Two days ago, the World Health Organization officially declared the Wuhan virus to be a pandemic.

“This is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva. It’s the first time the WHO has called an outbreak a pandemic since the H1N1 “swine flu” in 2009. Even as he raised the health emergency to its highest level, Tedros said hope remains that COVID-19 can be curtailed. And he urged countries to take action now to stop the disease. “WHO has been in full response mode since we were notified of the first cases,” Tedros said. “And we have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”

This is a fairly rational decision. The virus has infected well over 100,000 people worldwide, killing about 4% of those, and it has spread to at least 114 countries since it first appeared in Wuhan, China…making it a foreign Wuhan Chinese virus:

I think, starting next week @RedState contributors will be required to call it foreign Wuhan Chinese virus because #ChinaIsAsshoe — streiff (@streiffredstate) March 13, 2020

But then some amazing things happened. After demanding nations take “urgent and aggressive action,” it then issued this statement:

Borders should be kept open and people and trade flowing in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, although countries have a sovereign right to take measures to try to protect their citizens, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. The WHO, which declared the accelerating outbreak a global emergency on Thursday, voiced fresh concern that the virus could spread undetected in a country with a weak health system. There is a “huge reason to keep official border crossings open” to avoid people entering irregularly and going unchecked for symptoms, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a Geneva briefing. “If travel restrictions would be imposed we hope they are as short-lived as possible to try to continue the normal flow of life,” he added.

This is patent nonsense. Any number of illegal immigrants, if you ignore the tidal wave of recently demobilized Islamic fighters Turkey is trying to push in Europe, is going to be dwarfed by legal travelers. As many, if not most, carriers of Wuhan virus are asymptomatic for part or all of their infectious period, there is no way to screen them. Plus, allowing large numbers of immigrants and foreign travelers into countries where schools are already closed because of the pandemic makes no sense. It only makes sense in one way…if someone is pulling strings inside the WHO trying to get travel restrictions lifted.

And today, just as China was beginning to carry out an aggressive, and I think they will eventually realize it to be an monumentally ill-considered propaganda campaign in the US to try to convince us that the virus has nothing to do with China and that maybe even the US Army started it all,

2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3 — Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020

the World Health Organization issued this notice:

WHO director general: "Europe has now become the epicenter of the pandemic." Latest updates: https://t.co/7jlFrdN8vq pic.twitter.com/3aQ0vtioUK — NBC News (@NBCNews) March 13, 2020

Try finding an announcement by the WHO that China is the epicenter of the pandemic.

What struck me about the WHO obviously and blatant water-carrying for the ChiComs was this story from Australia back in February. Australian health officials had been monitoring the spread of Wuhan virus in China and concluded that a epidemic was underway. They waited for the WHO to act and when they didn’t, Australia issued a travel ban for China on Feburary 1. It was only weeks later that the WHO agreed that there was an epidemic underway in China.

Why were the Australians ahead of the world? For a very simple reason. They don’t trust the WHO. The information from multiple international sources is that the WHO is under intense pressure from the Chinese government, and succumbing to it. The Australian Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, told the NSC that it was medically inexplicable that the WHO hadn’t already declared a global pandemic. It’s politics, in other words. That’s why Australia had earlier forged ahead of the WHO in declaring the China travel ban, on February 1. It was, again, on the unanimous advice of the [Australian Health Protection Principal Committee]. The travel ban was decided immediately after the US made the same call. Beijing instantly lashed both the US and Australia on that occasion – the Chinese Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, People’s Daily, calling it “racist”. … The political capture of the WHO means, in effect, that it’s every country for itself. It also underlines the central importance of keeping politics and other extraneous pressures out of the decision-making processes on a medical matter. Likewise, China’s early political cover-ups and bungling wasted precious weeks in containing the virus.

This pandemic has been an eye opener for us all. For those free-traders and globalists who thought trade with China was a way of liberalizing that regime, this should be a particular disappointment. We’ve learned that, at its core, the Chinese government is a ruthless, self-interested actor which can’t be trusted and which will have no qualms at buying organizations and media outlets (check our own media’s coverage of China, for instance) in order to prevent criticism.